Wall Ties! Two surveys - Two opinions

[lewishardwick]

Hi all,

Looking for some advice as a first time buyer.

I viewed and offered on a property a couple of weeks ago. The property is a ground floor maisonette.
The mortgage lender carried out their valuation survey of the property and have agreed the offer without any restrictions or conditions.
I also instructed a Homebuyers survey for peace of mind. This highlighted a number of concerns. Most are easily dealt with, no gas/electric certs flags as a category three etc.

However, they have also noted the gable wall has some bulging and suggesting wall tie failure. I went and took a look at the property and it appears to be at the first floor level that you can see some bulging.

The current owner has stated the building maintenance is covered "top floor cover their walls and roof, ground floor cover their walls and foundations" I am waiting for written confirmation of this.

I am going to get an additional surveyor to inspecting specifically this issue.

So my question, am I better off running a mile and starting again? I've had a root on here and other forums and prices seem to be around the £2-7k depending on the size / area of the building. I know you can buy kits to do it, but I suspect I'm better off getting this done professionally for guarantees/warranties.

Do I also need to inform my lender? Or should I only inform them once I've received the second survey? I'm guessing there's not much to be done until I know more.

I now know why my parents have only moved once. It's a headache!

Thanking you all in advance!

 

[^woody^]

The current owner has stated the building maintenance is covered "top floor cover their walls and roof, ground floor cover their walls and foundations" I am waiting for written confirmation of this.

That's a bizarre arrangement if it is actually true.

Normally when you buy a a flat, you are buying the internal rooms and not the structure. The external structure and communal areas are covered under a joint agreement whereby all the occupants of the block pay a pro-rata amount for any work to the external structure.

So the upper flat owner contributes to any work to the foundations, and the lower flat owner pays towards any work on the roof, say.

If there is wall tie failure to the upper flat, then the owner of the lower flat will get hit with a share of the repair bill.

Your legal advisor needs to check the lease and repairing obligations carefully. If you want the flat, then you need to negotiate the cost of that work off the asking price - but you need to know how this cost will be arrived at first.

The repair costs could be anything, and more importantly the lease will determine how much this could be - and how much gets apportioned to the owners. Don't go by anything you see on here or anywhere else. The lease is everything.

I would not rack up any more survey costs until you know exactly what you are getting into in terms of the lease/freehold.

 

[lewishardwick]

You are right, it did sound odd to me. I have had received the initial swathe of documents from the vendors solicitor. No mention of ownership, but it does mention a lease, something which I have not been advised of from anyone thus far.

I think I'll be calling my solicitor to review what they have and do some legwork....

Thanks for the reply!

 

[GeeTee]

Leasehold properties can be a minefield - as woody says, the lease is everything - you need to get a copy of the lease ahead of even thinking about making an offer. Identify who owns the freehold (is it an individual or a property investment company?). How many years are left on the lease? (renewing the lease can be prohibitively expensive once the remaining number of years drops below a certain point). Obtain details on the arrangements for property maintenance and building insurance i.e. what is the maintenance charge? what does it cover? can the current leaseholder provide you with previous years' accounts from the maintenance company?

The typical scenario is that the freehold is held by some essentially uncontactable investment company with the maintenance and buildings insurance being managed by a property management company (who take a cut on everything they negotiate, and every letter they post out!). Usually all costs are spread evenly across all leaseholders within the building e.g. you buy a ground floor flat in a 6 story block, the property management firm decides the roof needs replacing - you pay a share of that cost.

Above all, don't listen to the estate agent when they try to say that owning a leasehold is the same as owning a freehold, it really isn't. Do some reading, there are plenty of real horror stories involving unscrupulous property management firms and / or recalcitrant freeholders.

Like everything in life, it's not all bad, not every PM company is out to screw leaseholders but the bad eggs are out there and they have some hefty legal powers to back up their ways of working such as attaching additional costs directly to your mortgage.

Apologies if that came across a bit negative, but first time buyers really need to know what they are getting into with leasehold agreements and go into it with eyes wide open.