Mortgages.scot

Getting a lot of mortgage/property-related questions at the moment, which is ok as it is the area I know most about. This question comes from Santos who Recently purchased a new property and found issues after moving in.

After we moved into our new home (old house) we started putting items in the loft space. Something didn’t look right on some of the wooden beams. Turns out there is Woodworm all over the loft. I spoke to the surveyor who says he is not responsible, I intend to go to a solicitor but wondered if you could quickly suggest why he is not responsible?

This is not as uncommon as you may think. Although I can likely tell you straight away that you are unlikely to have a claim against the surveyor.

It really depends on the type of report you had done, unless it was a more detailed inspection such as a building survey then most likely it was a basic valuation.

The issue with most valuations is that the surveyor limits his/her inspection to what can been seen. They won’t move furniture to see behind it for example. In the case of attics, unless they can walk straight in or up to it then at best they may put their head/shoulders above the hatch and simply look around.

If he/she did not actually go up and look around then there is little you can do, in my opinion. Even if they did go up there you need to be able to prove that whilst they were up there the woodworm could not have been missed by someone experienced enough to know the signs.

Unless at an advanced stage the only signs of Woodworm are small flight holes as shown in the image above. The longer they are active the more holes appear thus making it more obvious.

I obviously cannot advise you what to do, but unless you can prove the surveyor went up into the loft and the woodworm was obvious then you have little hope of a successful claim against them I suspect.