When you get a bad Chartered Surveyor’s report

At Structural Engineers Reports, we usually enter the sale or purchase process of a property after the buyer has had a Chartered surveyor’s report. A bad survey can mean the sale falls through with a potential buyer getting cold feet when presented with the report. But it doesn’t always have to be that way.

We would always advise that you speak to your surveyor to discuss the contents of the report. This will ensure you fully understand the condition of the property, any associated issues, and their implications. The standard surveyor’s report is called a Homebuyers report which will rate defects in a traffic light system. If the report has raised something that needs further investigation, your surveyor can tell you what that means; it could be a major or minor issue or even something that needs involvement from a specialist. This is all part of the service that the surveyor provides. They should not be charging you extra to discuss this with you.

Your surveyor could have identified structural issues which need investigating by a structural engineer. It is at this stage where Structural Engineers Reports usually come in.

When you contact us, we will ask you some questions about the property and provide a fixed fee quotation for a visual inspection. We will request you send us a copy of the surveyor’s report, or at least extracts which refer to the structural issues noted. We can then ensure we respond in full to the assumed structural issues raised in the report. Our inspection is looking to confirm structural integrity of the property and if we cannot do that, we may recommend further investigations. This could be an excavation of trial holes to check the condition of the subsoils or a CCTV survey if there are potential drainage issues.

Once we have provided you with our report, including any further investigations undertaken, you will then have all the facts you need about the structural integrity of the property. You can be confident of making an informed decision about whether you want to continue with the purchase or leave it for another buyer.