HATS!

I can’t get away with hats. I don’t think that I suit them and, most of the time, I’m so desperately in need of a haircut that they make me look more ridiculous than normal.

Over 30 years ago, a partner of a very well respected Newcastle Surveying and Estate Agency practice (who misguidedly thought he had some control over what I did on a day to day basis!) explained all about hats.

He had two, his Valuers hat and his Estate Agents hat.

His Valuers hat made him serious, cautious and a very professional individual indeed. On the other hand, his Estate Agents hat, which I imagine as a smart black trilby, perhaps with a jaunty feather tucked into the band on one side, made him into the home owners friend.

“What a wonderful house. I would be honoured to sell this for you and will write the most glowing set of sales particulars that you could ever imagine”.

That hat altered his mindset and allowed him to take an enthusiastic approach to giving valuation advice to people wanting to sell their houses.

Remarkably, everything seemed to be worth more when he had his Estate Agents hat on than when he was wearing his Valuers flat cap/beret (you decide!).

If I wore hats, I would also have two, one for valuations and the other for surveys.

For surveying, the Surveyors hat should, I suppose, be a building site hard hat and that might, after all, limit the damage I have occasionally caused to my head (concussion twice), stitches once and occassional small 'nicks', when crawling around in the deep and dark recesses of buildings.

Time and time again, potential and actual Clients say “I had a survey when I bought the house”.

Invariably, they didn’t – it was a valuation inspection carried out for their Building Society.(Different hat again!)

Mortgage advisors consistently use the term “survey” when they should mean valuation.

Make no mistake, they are very, very different.

Ask me to value something and that’s what I’ll do. I will take an overview on general condition, but I’m not going to give you any major detail relating to condition for the simple reason that I’m not being paid to do that.

Ask me to carry out a survey and you get something entirely different - a tale of woe and despair! No cheerful news, only facts, in black and white, without any glossing over to lessen the effect of that potentially bad news.

That’s what you want, that’s what you are paying for and that’s what you get.

Facts, the information that you need to know now to tell you exactly what condition the property that you hope to buy is in and advice on what you need to do now, soon, and in due course to a) deal with the immediate problems and b) sort out maintenance and repair work that will become more expensive to deal with, over time, if you don’t do something about it.

One Surveyor that I have known since my days at school has always wanted to weigh his completed reports and charge by the gram! His logic, although he can’t get away with this scheme, is that the more that the report weighs, the more information is in there and therefore it has greater value.

It’s a good idea, but Clients wouldn’t tolerate it.

It doesn’t work that way, obviously, as survey fees are quoted based on the property’s purchase price.

On occassions, when talking to a Client who has renegotiated and made a large saving on purchase cost with the benefit of my survey advice, I have suggested 10% of that saving coming my way! as you can guess, it hasn't worked yet.

If you think about it, an older house will always have more wrong with it than a more modern house. The lower the price bracket, the greater the likelihood of there being something wrong, the logic here being that in the lower price brackets money is tighter for the owner and repairs may not have been dealt with, when necessary.

The lesson here is extremely simple. When you are buying a house, you get what you pay for.

If you pay for a valuation (the mortgage inspection from your Building Society) that’s what you’re actually getting. If you really want to know what you are buying, you need a survey.

It’s an extra cost at a time when everyone is after a slice of your hard earned cash, but it’s going to be the best few hundred pounds you’ve spent in the expensive process of buying your new home.

House prices go up every year, some years a lot more than others and, to be brutally frank, a survey could give you the opportunity to re-negotiate the purchase price to reflect cost of repairs and the survey cost will more than pay for itself.

Newcastle based Surveyors live here or have worked in the area for an awfully long time. There’s not much that they don’t know about individual house types, peculiarities of certain streets and they are all a nice bunch.

There’s nothing stopping you from picking up the phone and having a chat with one of them before you buy and, let’s face it, just for the cost of a phone call you don’t have to commit yourself to a survey, but you can listen to what they can do for you and understand the obvious benefits.

Ideally, of course, you will ring me!

Would you really buy a car without a test drive? – Why should your next home be anything different.