Should I have a homebuyers survey done before buying my house?

Buying a home is a major investment, failed to mention a gigantic commitment. Unless you are fabulously wealthy, purchasing a home, new or old, is something that you can’t turn around and change your mind about after the fact, as reselling a home will often lose you some of the investment, and take a lot of time.

Thus, you really want to make sure that all of your ducks are in a row, as they say, before making that final commitment to purchase a home. While sellers and real estate companies may try to pressure you to make a quick decision, you should absolutely never cave to this, and you should demand that you have every single thing possible done first, including inspections, appraisals and, yes, having a house surveyor look at the home as well.

Now, and I am not judging realtors, as their job is to sell property, they can be rather ruthless and try to push you into making a quick choice, and I want to explain to you why you should not fall for that.

A homebuyers survey does not age well!

Here’s the thing. In a country as old as the UK, or really anywhere in the Western world, property lines, measurement specifications and the very structure of older homes can change rapidly. People are always modifying things, accuracies become stricter and stricter over time due to technology and attention from the government, it’s a mess.

The result is that the floor plan you have may not actually reflect the actual nature of the home at this point, and the property lines may not be accurate anymore either. Even if it was done some time ago, or even not that long ago, the information may no longer be accurate.

Thus, the information given to you by a realtor may not be accurate. Now, I want to point out right now that realtors are not necessarily trying to deceive you, and no realtor worth their salt actually would deceive you, but by law, the onus of having the surveys done is on the potential buyer, not the real estate company. Thus, most companies will have the survey stun, because it costs the money without the guarantee of a sale.

Really, all you have to do is look online with a simple search based on your area. It’s really that simple. The only real criteria you need to worry about our whether or not they are chartered with someplace like RICS, where standards and the quorum are very, very strictly-enforced. If you go with that as your base criteria, you should be absolutely fine. This is a very small, niche industry, so the competition is both then and aggressive at the same time. It’s a little odd.

I do want to point out that the service doesn’t particularly come cheap, so if you are shopping for this service based around the lowest price, you will spend a lot of time spinning your wheels. It won’t break your bank, so just accept that the general price you see is about what the service costs.

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