When you’re buying your first house (or second for that matter), you’re full of excitement and anticipation, thinking about moving day, furniture and logistics. But there’s a lot that needs to happen before you get the keys, and that can get confusing. You know you need to hire a bunch of people to help you – including a surveyor – but you might not be sure exactly what a surveyor is. When you find out, you might wonder why you couldn’t just get anyone to do your house survey. In this article, we will be answering who can survey houses and provide guidance on house surveys.
When you think of a surveyor, you probably conjure up an image of a serious looking middle–aged white man with a clipboard, driving from property to property in a shiny BMW. And to be honest, for many years this was the reality. Now however, the profession is much more diverse, with surveyors not taking themselves too seriously, and the car is more likely to be an Audi.
Oh, and to make this more complicated, the surveying profession has become much more specialised, with more and more people following specific niches. So the term ’surveyor’ doesn’t really tell you much anymore. There are over 22 different pathways to becoming chartered with the RICS (the profession’s governing body), and they all specialise in slightly different things.
This hasn’t made things easy for the general house–buying public, who haven’t been involved in the industry changes. Many surveyors won’t touch residential surveys at all, which makes finding a good surveyor for your home even more difficult. Instead, there are only 4 types of surveyors that will offer residential surveys for home buyers:
• General practice surveyors
• Valuation surveyors
In our opinion the last one is your best option if you want advice on a house – but then we are building surveyors, so we may be biased!
Some of them anyway. If we listed all 22, we would be here all day! Instead of going through absolutely all of them, let’s look at the 4 main types that you as a home buyer might come across. Warning – they might seem similar on the surface, but there are some subtle, important differences to pay attention to.
General Practice Surveyors: Strangely, the rarest type of surveyor these days, as they were usually formed in the days when surveying wasn’t as specialised. They dabble in a bit of everything, like property management, commercial property, rent reviews and survey work to name a few. This means that the time they have available to focus on each area is limited, and while they’ll have a good breadth of knowledge, most of it is surface level. Without specialising, they might not have the depth of experience for house surveys that others have. And since the RICS leave it up to individual surveyors what their training focuses on, they might not be all that familiar with current regulations and best practices.
Residential Surveyors: Specialists in everything residential. That could be sales, lettings, surveys and property management. Most firms offering house surveys will focus on house surveys, but there are a few who focus more on sales or lettings and just do house surveys on the side. They’re not a bad shout, but you always need to clarify what their focus is before you work with them.
Valuation Surveyors: They will have trained with valuation as their primary competence. Over the course of their practice they may have picked up some skills or knowledge to provide Level 2 surveys, and some might even offer Level 3, but again, they can have a great breadth of knowledge without the matching depth you need.
Building Surveyors: The type of surveyor that’s expected to have extensive skills in building pathology. In other words, they’re great at spotting defects in buildings and analysing them. If someone is a building surveyor then this has usually been the main focus of their entire career, and it’s the core skill needed when surveying a house. Of course there will be other services they offer, like commercial surveys, party walls, projects and dilapidations, but these are all centred around that core skill of building pathology, which is what makes them the perfect people for residential house surveys.
We have to give a mention here to the non-chartered surveyors out here. Because while the RICS is viewed as the governing body of the surveying profession, you don’t actually have to be a member. Unlike architects, who have to be formally recognised by their governing body in order to practise, anyone can set themselves up as a surveyor.
This is where you can run into problems, because like every other professional, there will be good non-chartered surveyors, and there will be bad ones. There are probably ugly ones too, but that’s not why we’re here. Employing a non-chartered surveyor is a risk, and one you need to take knowingly given that they have strict rules governing their practices.
Whatever type of surveyor you choose, make sure you check out their online presence, reviews and professional designations. This way you know that other clients have received a great service, and that they’re trusted by their peers, which should give you some peace of mind.
We’ve come across a few people in the past who have asked a builder to assess their new home. Generally, our advice here is simple – don’t! Builders are good at building houses, but they don’t have the skills, training and knowledge to properly inspect and assess a building.
When a surveyor gives you building advice, it will usually be impartial and insurance–backed. Builders can’t offer this level of backing to any advice, and may not be impartial either. If you’re offered a cut-price survey by a builder, think about what might be in it for them. It could be a marketing tactic to get some work from you once you’ve bought the property – work that might not even be necessary. Again, it’s a big risk, and not one we recommend taking with your most expensive purchase!
We can’t tell you that. We’re not here to point you in one direction or the other, just to provide you with some helpful tools to better understand the people you might end up dealing with during your house purchase journey.
Of course, if you do decide to make the (in our opinion, correct) choice to hire a chartered building surveyor to complete your survey, then our team would be happy to help. All you have to do is give us a call on 023 8155 0051 to start the process of de-risking your house purchase.
We also have a range of videos talking through various aspects of surveying. You can access them via our website or our YouTube channel.
At the time of writing, we have a total of 95 reviews across Trustpilot and Google. We are proud to say that they are all 5 star ratings across the board.
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Tim set up Harrison Clarke Chartered Surveyors in July 2017 following a series of public and private sector surveying roles, having previously worked for the University of Cambridge, Rund Partnership, Goadsby, and CBRE.
Tim has degrees in building surveying, construction project management, and business administration.
