At a time when young people are finding it increasingly difficult to buy their first home, many are simply rushing headlong into homebuying.
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One in five 18 to 29 year old home owners failed to carry out any basic assessments of their property before agreeing to buy it, resulting in 66 per cent falling victim to unexpected problems in their first year as a homeowner.
The most hassle is cause by noisy or obnoxious neighbours, followed by structural problems.
As part of the Safe as Houses campaign from AA Legal Services, noisy and obnoxious neighbours topped the national poll as the most common problem with a new home, with 17 per cent of homeowners experiencing problems with they neighbours within a year of moving in.
Not only are young homebuyers less likely to have met prospective neighbours before buying, they are most likely to discover too late that they have anti-social people living next door.
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Next on the list of new home complaints were structural defects including leaking roofs, rotten windows, draughts, drainage problems and rising damp, coupled with traffic noise and lack of parking space.
With fewer than one in three new home owners seeking an independent structural survey before buying their new property, the research suggests that many of these, sometimes costly, structural surprises could have been identified and taken into account before the sale.
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Young people are the most likely to forgo a structural survey, just 7 per cent seeking confirmation on the structural integrity of a home before exchanging contracts.
On a similar vein, just 11 per cent of home owners said they had checked the drainage of their building or investigated levels of noise pollution before moving in.
James Molloy, head of AA Legal Services, said: Young homebuyers now taking out mortgages which they will be paying off for the next 50 or so years so they should feel confident about the investment they are making. Simple legal and structural checks not only give peace of mind, but could also avoid costly surprises.
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Our Safe as Houses research has revealed that many people do not know where they can turn to for affordable advice on homebuying. More than two in five dont even know the difference between a leasehold and freehold property.
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