Moving house question, any surveyors out there?

What's the going rate for a Homebuyers survey and is the price usually linked to the value of the property? Also is it worth going for the full structural survey as opposed to the homebuyers survey? Cheers to any budding surveyors who may be able to help.

 

Think there's three types, middle one (about £350 ish?) is usually enough. Full one will uncover all sorts you may not be bothered about anyway but useful if you're buying an older property

 

Cheers - just been quoted £550+vat for the middle one. He said the full one was very expensive. I said your middle one's fkin expensive. Property is 30-40yrs old.

 

We went for the cheap one

And got it free with our mortgage. The more money you pay, the more likely they are to find something that needs doing, the more likely you'll have to spend money on getting such things fixed and the more likely the mortgage company will hold money back until the things are fixed. If there is a real problem with the property the cheap survey will find it.

 

Think we paid about £350 but it was 4 years ago.

 

We paid about £400 (it could be less, I'll check when I get home from work) for the middle homebuyers survey and used it to knock £3,000 off the agreed price (they valued the house at three grand less than we had offered). I'm pretty sure that if we had had the "free" one they would have valued it at the agreed price.

Remember a proper surveyor should value a property using different factors other than the local rags "houses for sale" section, you can do a search on the web to see how they value properties. They should not simply rubber stamp the price you have agreed. If you get a valuation that is identical to your offer I would hazard a guess that the surveyor is either being lazy or incompetent.

 

Thanks for that guys, appreciated. n/t