Do you really need a survey when buying a house?
Well, no, there is no requirement to obtain a Building Condition Survey when buying a house in England and Wales.
Should I want a survey
But! A better question is, “Should I want a survey?”. Now the answer should be a resounding, “Yes”!
It is important to understand that buying a house is rather different than most of the other purchases you will make and not just because the sums of money are probably much larger.
It is different because in one form or another most purchases you will make in your life will be from a retailer or as the current law puts it, a “trader”. When buying from a trader you are protected by the Consumer Rights Act 2015, but when buying a property these protections do not apply.
So, what happens when these protections fall away? Well then, Caveat emptor applies.
Caveat emptor
Aside from being everyone’s favourite piece of Latin trivia, Caveat emptor, or “Let the buyer beware”, has important legal meaning in terms of property transactions. It means that it is the buyer’s responsibility to establish that the property and its condition are as they expect.
The seller, while required to answer specific questions honestly, is not required to offer up information they have not been asked for, or do not know.
We can now see that the buyer in property transaction carries a much greater responsibility for establishing the nature, condition and circumstances of the house they are considering buying.
At the same time the buyer does not enjoy the protections that they probably take for granted in their day-to-day purchases.
With this understood, perhaps it is time to revisit the question, “Should I want a survey?”.
A survey and your appetite for risk
As with so many options in life, this is a question of your appetite for risk.
If you are the type of person who has the money to spare and gets a kick from going to Las Vegas and losing a few hundred thousand pounds at the roulette table of a weekend, then perhaps you don’t need a Building Condition Survey.
But for the rest of us, the price of a house is a crushing large sum of money and probably the biggest purchase we will ever make. So, if you are a reasonably minded person, without unlimited funds and/or a delight in excessive risk, “Should you want a survey”, Yes, Yes, you absolutely should!
