Surveyor report advice

Don't touch it.

Their own surveyor has told them it's not a structural concern so they are surely just chancing their arm.

99% of pre-purchase surveys will come up with superficial issues like this. Any reasonable person bidding on a property shouid expect things like this. So this is not some major new information that has a bearing on the value of the house. I would absolutely say no you will not be repairing. The fact that they are raising this as an issue tells me they are either naive or chancers.

Don't fix it and don't agree to anything. It is a sellers market. you have the power here.If they pull out of the sale on account of a trivial crack like this, then more fool them!!

Anyway, those surveyors reports are largely a crock. They have to be seen to be justifying their fee so they always come back with something.

I bought a house and the surveyor had some big spiel about standing water in a manhole and how I needed to get quotes and camera surveys etc. I looked at it and it was a thing of nothing, mountain out of a molehill stuff.

And he also totally missed that most of the internal joinery was a disaster - internal doors badly warped and twisted all over the place. I think only 2 close and latch properly. The rest need to be re-hung or replaced, which I can do myself thankfully. But I knew this going in, but i didn't say anything to the "engineer" as I wanted to see would he pick it up or miss it. Well he missed it. There were no substantive comments about the joinery in the house. Just that it was pine panel yada yada.

I asked him by the way did he inspect the joinery of the house too . He said he did. I said were there any particular findings on that end. He said no it all seemed fine. I said oh right, and showed him several pictures of some very visibly warped doors before asking him whether that could have happened over the past three weeks. He didn't have much to say about it. I told him then that I am a civil & structural engineer myself and I had copped the issue when i first viewed the house but it wasn't a big deal because I am able to re-hang doors (father was a carpenter). I knew there was no point raising it with the sellers as it is a sellers market and they'd be like "take it or leave it, son" if they had any sense..

I had him. I caught him out at his own game. And he knew I had him. But I had made my point.

Moral of the story is that these surveys are largely a routine formality done with little effort. They are likely to miss as much as the spot. To be taken with a pinch of salt, and the surveyor assumed a poor operator until they prove the contrary.

There are good and bad surveyors, like every other profession. Not sure why you felt the need to test yours, and then confront him over the doorframe thing, and then brag about it on the internet (a bit Partridge-esque) but that's for you to ponder I guess.

In this instance, the surveyor was correct to highlight the cracks in the building. It's the buyers who are being fussy here.

I'd agree that some people are basically taking the piss.

I friend of mine was recently selling his house that I'd surveyed 5 years previous. Surveyor for new buyer asked my friend if he had the report he got done originally as nothing would have changed.

He thought he was getting a copy so arrived at house and when it did turned out he wasn't getting the original report, he said, I have not time to go through the house but it looks ok. Said he had 6 more to 'do' that evening.

Now in that context, the fee is scandalous and he is clearly negligent.

I try to do my best on them and as I said, they are certainly not a money maker when the correct amount of time goes into them.

Personally, I do comment on doors not latching excessive frame gaps, twisted door leaf, door dragging on frame etc as well as similar comment on all windows as locks and hinges are never maintained but many surveyors exclude all that stuff by simply not commenting on fitout or minor maintenance issues at all.

I used to do a walk around with client at end of survey. Useful in ways however I had a couple of issues with it. For example there are items around building regs that might need to be cross checked with commencement date in order to check compliance. In reality it was impossible to communicate this to people and I found in a few occasions people would go ahead based on the verbal description and then later query the further issues highlighted in report.

I also find that personally I get a truer picture of whether something is a runner or not by the time I've gone through the whole write up process and will then advise if economical or not to go ahead..... There is always room for opinion there so don't do the walk around anymore as my advice will be more 'considered' after write up.

Also on one occasion, I was promised payment on the day in person. They arrived, asked if there were issues, showed them some major problems, said they had to go collect the kids and would be back before I finished but wasn't seen again so the walk around is no more.