Building Condition Surveys

A Practical and Concise Introduction

Mike Hoxley

• Publisher: RIBA Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000701531
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Condition surveys are becoming increasingly important and standardised in approach but are a high risk service with the potential for legal consequences if mistakes are made. Professionals therefore require clear, up-to-date advice on how to inspect and report accurately and this book provides a one-stop shop of uniquely practical, concise and accessible guidance written by one of the leading authorities in the field. The key coverage includes:

• Domestic and commercial surveys; surveys for historic, new and dilapidated buildings
• Improvements to surveys including the inclusion of colour photographs, condition ratings, use of the term 'technical due diligence' and increased professionalization
• New techniques for further investigation including thermography, endoscopy and ground radar
• Advances in the diagnosis of causes of masonry cracking
• New hazards such as Japanese Knotweed
• Updated to reflect the latest RICS regulations, legislation and guidance on building surveying
• Case studies of both bad and good practice and images to illustrate real world problems and solutions

Chapter 1
Introduction

The subject matter of this book is the professional service of assessing the condition of buildings. While surveying existing buildings and reporting on their condition is not the everyday work of most architects, many do carry out this type of work, either regularly or infrequently.

As with any established area of work, there are expectations of the service the architect should provide to the client when inspecting and reporting on the condition of buildings, and it is the aim of this book to outline those expectations. Of course, what a particular client expects will be influenced by whether they have commissioned this type of work before, and the courts have also provided clarity on this subject from time to time. The author is a Professor of Building Surveying and has been a chartered surveyor for nearly 40 years. For nearly half of this period he worked in private practice, where his primary activity was the assessment of condition of existing buildings. Building methods change as a result of regulation and practice, and so there is a need to keep up to date to be able to advise clients adequately. However, there is another aspect to the time dimension, and that is an awareness of the construction methods of the past. When undertaking this type of work in a particular geographical area, the surveyor needs to have knowledge of how buildings in that locality were built over the decades and centuries gone by.

In this context, the term ‘surveyor’ refers to any built environment professional with the capacity and inclination to survey property. Such professionals will include architects, surveyors, engineers and builders, and throughout this book the term surveyor is intended to refer to any such professional carrying out a survey. Chapter 4 discusses the core knowledge that the surveyor requires. The surveyor’s most important subject area is construction technology, for without this the surveyor cannot function. It is the author’s very firm and long-held conviction that elementary construction technology (i.e. domestic building technology) is by far the most important subject studied on any built environment professional degree course. In every case where the author has been called in to advise on professional negligence by a surveyor, the main problem has proved to be the failure by the surveyor to understand (or perhaps more importantly to remember) the most basic construction technology principles. Certainly any slips-ups the author has made have been due to this basic problem. This book is not intended to provide this fundamental knowledge and it is assumed that the reader will have a sound knowledge of construction technology before considering undertaking a survey. What the book does attempt to do is to point out the areas of technology that professionals most commonly ignore when carrying out surveys.

Surveys can be broadly divided into two main types: those where condition is assessed, and those where measurements are recorded. The architect will be intimately acquainted with the second of these two types; it is the undertaking of condition surveys that is the principal concern of this book. Obviously it is when a home or commercial property changes ownership that there is the greatest demand for this activity. Besides transfer of ownership, the other main times when the assessment of condition is required are:

• prior to the carrying out of building or engineering works on adjacent or nearby land
• during or at the end of a lease, to assess legal responsibility for repair (dilapidations).

Of course there may well be other occasions when the owner of a building wishes to commission an inspection for some other purpose (e.g. because they are concerned about a particular defect such as dampness or masonry cracking).

Professional negligence and professional indemnity (PI) insurance are everyday concerns of the professional workplace and no professional activity can be considered without discussing these subjects. Of all the types of work undertaken by built environment professionals, the inspection of buildings is one of the riskier. In some years within recent times, insurers have paid out more in claims than they have received in premiums for survey work. In times of recession, there is frequently an increase in the incidence of claims for this area of professional activity as clients attempt to recoup from the unfortunate surveyor some of the losses they have sustained due to falling property values. In any dispute about the quality of a building survey service, a court of law and legal advisers are likely to refer to the guidance that the main professional bodies publish on this subject. The author has therefore referred in this book to some of the documents published by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). In the event of a claim, it is these documents to which the courts are likely to refer – just as a court would refer to RIBA advice on building design work were this to be carried out by, for example, a chartered building surveyor.

In Chapter 2 of this book, the various types of survey are considered in greater detail. Chapter 3 discusses the preliminary steps that the surveyor needs to take before attempting to carry out the inspection. Chapter 4 considers the services that other consultants can provide to the surveyor and the client, while Chapter 5 outlines the equipment required to inspect buildings. The subsequent four chapters are concerned with the building inspection itself, starting with the actual process of inspection in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 considers the inspection of the essential matters that data from PI insurers suggest are the areas where most negligence claims arise. These are associated with dampness, building movement, timber defects, roof structures and coverings. Chapter 8 looks at the inspection of services and environmental issues, while Chapter 9 considers the remaining elements of an inspection that are not covered in the previous two chapters.

Of course, even if a first-rate inspection has been carried out, all will have been in vain if the written report is deficient, so Chapter 10 considers how the report should be written. To emphasise the essentials of report writing, two case studies of actual building survey reports are presented in Chapters 11 and 12. The first of these is a good example of a recent survey of a small terraced house located in an urban setting. The second report is a much weaker example of a survey of a larger rural property, and an accompanying commentary shows where it could have been improved. The book concludes with details of suggested further reading.

For this expanded third edition of the book the entire content has been updated. While the essentials of building condition surveying have not changed significantly since the second edition, there have been some changes in emphasis; for example, there has been a move to adopt formal condition ratings when reporting defects, and environmental and sustainability issues have become far more important. Survey equipment has become more sophisticated, and the advent of digital photography has meant that it is now much easier to include photographs in reports. We now have a better understanding of certain issues whereby previously the information was unavailable – for example the effects of Japanese knotweed. Health and safety in the workplace has also become increasingly important. All of these issues are covered in this expanded third edition of Building Condition Surveys.

Chapter 2
Types of survey

Definitions of inspections

The various types of survey undertaken by surveyors were last considered by the Construction Industry Council (CIC) in 2005. The CIC is a representative forum for the professional bodies, research organisations and specialist business associations in the construction industry and has, in consultation with architects, engineers and surveyors, produced a document entitled Definitions of Inspections and Surveys of Buildings. A prime motivation for the publication of this document was to address the confusion over the use of terms describing the many different types of inspections it is possible to undertake. For example, a lay-person might reasonably have expected a ‘structural survey’ to be carried out by a structural engineer, but in fact many chartered surveyors were carrying out inspections that they described as structural surveys. This confusion was not solely in the minds of clients, as different professions were also calling the same type of inspection by different names. One of the conclusions of this document, therefore, was that members of the property and construction professions should be urged to cease using the term ‘structural survey’.

In the event, many practitioners have been slow to change, and readers may be aware of cases where the old descriptions are still being used. This is partly due to the fact that estate agents and professionals, such as solicitors who advise clients to commission surveys, still use the old terms. The terms recommended by the CIC, which are used throughout this book, are discussed below but some more recently introduced inspections are also included in the discussion. The situation described relates to England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands but not to Scotland, which has a different legal system and property transfer process.

Domestic surveys

The vast majority of property inspections carried out in the UK are of houses, and there are four types of pre-acquisition surveys undertaken on residential property:

• Condition Report
• valuation
• property purchase survey and valuation
• building survey.

Condition Report

This type of inspection was introduced by the RICS some five years after the CIC document was last updated and is a succinct report which provides an assessment of the relative importance of any defects and problems encountered. Where the surveyor is not able to reach a conclusion with reasonable confidence then a recommendation for further investigation may be made. As the report does not include advice on repairs or maintenance, this usually means that it is only suitable for conventionally built, modern dwellings. The inspection of the roof space of the dwelling is from the access point – that is, the surveyor does not physically enter the roof space.

Valuation

At present about seven out of ten house purchasers rely solely on the valuation carried out by their mortgage company surveyor. However, the purpose of this inspection is not to assess condition but rather to estimate values – usually the current market value and the reinstatement value for insurance purposes. Not all valuations are carried out by a surveyor acting for the mortgage company, but the inspection, research and report will follow a similar format in all cases. Where the property inspected is for rent rather than sale, the main purpose of the valuation will be to ascertain that the rental value is a true reflection of the market value.

The inspection is fairly brief, and it is the research required to discover the recent selling price of similar properties in the same locality that is rather more important. Some mortgage companies insist on this comparable evidence being submitted with the mortgage valuation report. The valuation inspection will take account of relevant factors affecting value – such as condition, location and aspects of construction – that are readily observable on a walk-round inspection. The report (usually on a standard preprinted form) may be prepared by a surveyor employed directly by the mortgage company (a staff valuer) or by a panel valuer, who is a surveyor employed by a consultancy approved by the mortgage company. It can be very difficult for consultants to be appointed to the panel of a particular mortgage lender.

The inspection of a property for a valuation should include a ‘head and shoulders’ viewing of the roof space, but as with the Condition Report, it is not necessary to actually physically enter the roof space. Since the insurance risk is very often assessed from the results of this inspection, any significant factors affecting risk (e.g. the close proximity of trees on clay subsoils, any fire hazards, or flood and any evidence of subsidence) should be reported on.

Since the financial crisis of 2008, most lenders are placing as much emphasis on the ability of the borrower to repay the loan as on the formal mortgage valuation report. Some companies are relying on a ‘drive-past’ or ‘desk-top’ valuation (without the surveyor inspecting the interior or any part of the property in detail) just to ascertain whether the proposed purchase price is in the correct price bracket. This trend may well become more prevalent in the future. The valuer must not include the value of any sale inducements (such as stamp duty payments or cashback offers) when valuing newly built homes.

Property purchase survey and valuation

This is an intermediate survey, between the Condition Report and valuation inspections described above and the building survey (discussed below), and advises on value as well as giving information on significant aspects of the condition of the dwelling. The survey is carried out under standard conditions of engagement prepared by the professional organisation of which the surveyor is a member, and the report is prepared to a standard format approved by that organisation. An example of this type of survey is the Homebuyer Survey and Valuation originally introduced by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in 1981 (the latest version dates from 2010).

This intermediate type of survey is usually described as an ‘economy’ service. The client accepts that not every defect will be reported on, but the surveyor is under a duty to report on the essential matters that are likely to affect the value of the property. Many more intermediate surveys than building surveys are carried out annually, but the surveyor should be aware that the level of liability is similar and so the inspection needs to be just as thorough. When carrying out the inspection the surveyor is required to carry a ladder capable of inspecting roofs 3m high, but is not expected to raise fixed floorboards or to lift fitted carpets. Those areas of the property that are accessible and which can be inspected safely should be reported on and roof spaces should be inspected. However, where the dwelling is a flat, only those roof spaces that have direct access from the flat should be inspected. The common parts (i.e. entrance hall, staircase and landing) leading to the flat should also be inspected. The exterior of the entire block in which the flat is located should be inspected, since if there are any serious defects elsewhere in the block, these could impact upon the maintenance liability of the owner of the flat being inspected. The services would normally be inspected and commented on, but not tested. This economy survey is not designed for large or old dwellings or for houses requiring extensive refurbishment. For such properties, the building survey described below would be a more appropriate service for the surveyor to offer.

Buil...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Dedication
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Types of Survey
• Chapter 3 Preparation
• Chapter 4 Specialist Advice
• Chapter 5 Equipment
• Chapter 6 The Inspection Procedure
• Chapter 7 Inspecting the Essentials
• Chapter 8 Inspecting Services and Environmental Issues
• Chapter 9 Inspecting Other Elements
• Chapter 10 Writing the Report
• Chapter 11 Case Study of a Good Building Survey Report
• Chapter 12 Case Study of a Poor Building Survey Report
• Further Reading and References
• Index