A fifth (21 per cent) of houses in England do not meet the Department for Communities and Local Government’s (DCLG) ‘decent homes standard’, according to DCLG figures.
This is equal to 4.8 million homes across the country, including 2.9 million owner-occupied properties.
Nearly a million English homes are affected by damp problems like rising damp, condensation and mould. Damp problems affect 3 in every 100 owner-occupied homes, but problems like these wouldn’t always be flagged by a simple mortgage valuation.
In Scotland, 13.3 per cent of housing stock, or around 320,000 homes, suffer from damp problems including condensation and rising damp.
In view of that, e.surv charted surveyors advises homebuyers to run private surveys on their properties before purchase.
E.surv’s latest research showed that in July 2015 alone hombuyers were surprised by unexpected repair costs of £300 million and last year people who moved home paid almost £3.6 billion for unexpected repairs.
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) HomeBuyer Report will uncover unwelcome issues like damp and subsidence, as well as any key structural flaws, while a full RICS Building Survey will go into even further detail.
