Our Survey Says...

The boyfriend and I are about to take our first tentative steps onto the housing ladder and the other day we received the survey report for the property that we want to buy. We had been warned by those in the know that surveys don't usually tell you anything useful, but we weren't entirely prepared for the kinds of issues that the surveyor thought needed to be brought to our attention.

We were pretty sure that the flat didn't have any really bad structural defects, based on our own inspection of the property. I mean, we aren't experts, but nothing looked wonky, subsiding, damp and so on. The communal areas of the building were really well maintained and recently redecorated, too, which was nice. The surveyor agreed with us on all of these points. However, presumably so that we don't sue him if any problems come up in the future, his report mentioned a few generic problems that might or might not surface once we've moved in. So the report told us that "buildings of this age and type" have in the past been known to suffer from woodworm. Woodworm in the floorboards would mean considerable work would need to be done, which might cost us lots of money. If the worms turn up. They don't seem to be there now, but they might surface in the future. Or they might not - who can tell? Oh, and by the way, it has been known in these types of conversions to find amounts of asbestos. Which might or might not kill us, if it is there, which it probably isn't, but it might be. For a natural worrier like me, all of these things are a bit frightening. I think I'd rather not know about them. Let the flat fall down around my ears while I sit in oblivious bliss. But there we are... I know, we know, and we shall not sue the surveyor for not doing his duty because he has told us about them, whilst also telling us that the flat represents a good monetary investment.

So, I do understand why the poor surveyor has to be cautious, and I've just about stopped worrying about woodworm and asbestos. I think that by the end of the report, though, he'd just got a bit bored and decided to start finding minor, insignificant faults just for the sake of it. One of the things that attracted us to the flat was its neutral decoration, which we felt was perfectly decent yet still offered some scope for us to "put our own stamp on it" when we can afford to do so. The surveyor, however, wrote that we would probably want to redecorate at the earliest opportunity since the decor was rather basic. It isn't very exciting, for sure, but it's hard to see what fault you could find with white painted walls. He could have been diplomatic and wrote that it was "decorated in the minimalist style" or something. He saved his really harsh design critiques for the kitchen, though. Although the fitted units were serviceable, they were of a style that most people would consider dated and we would most likely need to replace them. Ouch. I must admit I didn't think they were spectacularly nice, but they obviously did their job and they weren't that bad. Obviously the boyfriend and I have outmoded domestic tastes.

Despite all of this, the survey didn't turn up anything that would mean we didn't wish to proceed with the purchase and things seem to be moving along fairly smoothly. When we finally move in I look forward to inviting our friends round to have a look at our terribly unfashionable, basically decorated, woodworm-ridden, asbestos-filled death trap of a flat, and cooking them a meal in our shamefully outdated kitchen.