House prices haven’t dropped this much since the 2012 London Olympics! Rightmove, the UK’s number one property portal and the UK’s largest property marketplace has found the price of property coming to market dropped by 1.5 percentage points in December, down a monetary value of -£4,496 on November’s average house price. After a second consecutive monthly fall, average new seller asking … Read More
Why Do I Need a Building Survey?
Our own Steve Holmes (FRICS) explains the benefits of a building survey. “It’s very easy not to see the ‘wood for the trees’ when we view a property for the first time. Not only do we have all the time pressures of the viewing, there is also the knowledge that there are now other willing buyers queuing up behind you … Read More
Trail of Suspicion
Whilst the most detailed survey available, even a full RICS Level 3 Building Survey can leave some questions that require further inspection and can lead to a longer trail of suspicion. We often get asked which sort of survey is required for a particular property. As we only offer Building Surveys, we tend to recommend it where the property is … Read More
Building Defects
As part of our Building Survey report, we summarize any building defects found by our chartered surveyors in an easy to read table, prioritizing them using our traffic light system & adding estimated cost for repairs. With thousands of completed Building Surveys on our server, we thought it would be interesting to take a look at the most common building … Read More
Buying a house at Auction
A property auction can be a great way to snap up a bargain. It is a quick and cost effective method when buying a property. However, it is important that you understand the process and are prepared for the issues that may lie ahead. Before the auction The first step to take is to look on the internet or visit … Read More
What is a mortgage survey?
What is a mortgage survey? When buying a property with a mortgage, most providers will require that you undertake a mortgage survey before lending is approved. The sole aim of this survey is to satisfy the lender that the property you are purchasing has enough value to cover the amount they are lending you. The surveyor will briefly inspect the … Read More
Property Market in 2035
What will the property market look like in 2035? Back in 1995 we were in the early days of the internet, we worked in cubicles and our computers were chunky and powered by Windows 95. There were no touch screen phones or flat screen TVs; people laughed at the idea of reading electronic books, and watching a home movie meant … Read More
Building Surveying – The Chawton Hill Way
We launched our regional building surveying programme nearly 10 months ago & we now cover 8 counties in the South; Surrey, Middlesex, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Essex, Suffolk, Kent & Sussex. Local building surveyors are being attracted by our full service proposition whereby we generate bookings in a pre-agreed set of postcodes and our HQ team handle all survey administration. This leaves … Read More
Party Wall advice
Party walls are an important aspect to consider when buying a new property. You’ll need to know if you share any walls, fences or boundaries with the neighbours, and whether they’ve got any plans to build before you move in. A building survey can tell you everything you need to know about party walls, but we’ve made a good start … Read More
Subsidence risk 2017
Subsidence risk is directly linked to an unusually wet winter followed by a particularly dry summer. With the potential of UK property owners suffering hundreds of millions of pounds in damage resulting from shrink/swell subsidence it’s well worth keeping an eye on the Met Office website Luckily the weather over winter 2016/17 was generally drier than the average since 1981 … Read More
Identifying damp in your property
Damp is one of the more common and damaging problems we find when carrying out a building survey. All our chartered surveyors are equipped with a Protimeter which measures the percentage of damp in various materials around the property and you will see our surveyors making a visual inspection of an area then taking readings with a protimeter at regular … Read More
Postcode comparison tool
We found this very useful postcode comparison tool on the HSBC website. It allows you to find out some useful comparisons of your current postcode, as well as review the postcode of an area you might be looking to move to. As we mentioned in our CHOOSING THE PERFECT LOCATION article, there are a number of things to consider when … Read More
Middlesex Building Surveys
Chawton Hill launch Middlesex building surveys – we are delighted to announce the expansion of our building survey service to include Middlesex and the surrounding area. Our latest team member is Paul Summers, who will be working remotely from Enfield, Middlesex offering our well established building survey service to areas such as; Enfield, St Albans, Hatfield, Welwyn Garden City, Harlow, … Read More
Building Surveys – The Chawton Hill Way
Building surveys are a very competitive market – for example just Google ‘building surveyor in Surrey’ and you will return nearly 400,000 results! So why trust the structural condition of your next property to Chawton Hill, after all aren’t all RICS accredited surveyors the same? Surely it’s about saving as much money as possible? A HomeBuyers report is much cheaper … Read More
Surveying Equipment
What surveying equipment do we regularly use and recommend at Chawton Hill? We ask our team of chartered building surveyors what they take to a full building survey? For more details on what is covered by a building survey please see our Why buy a Building Survey post or our Building Survey page. Steve Holmes, Director Dragon Anywhere smartphone dictation ... Read More
Site Surveys
The success of any building project is often determined by the depth and the quality of the work carried out before any building starts. Over our years of experience we have found that well over 50% of a project will often be spent on preparation and a key part of this is the various site surveys carried out to supplement and … Read More
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