This is not an exhaustive or a complete subject. It is likely to change over time, with edits, additions and deletions, and is simply a collection of my thoughts based on many years of experience. You should follow your instincts, and you must always seek your own professional advice.
When scrolling through property sales websites for your dream home, it is very tempting to look for the nice houses which have been ‘done up’ and could be an easy purchase. Buy. Move in. Unpack. Put the kettle on and order a takeaway. This is what a lot of people do.
However, this approach comes with some often unseen risks. I have written elsewhere on this Blog about high-risk purchases, those that have been retrofitted for thermal upgrades and property that has been ‘lovingly restored’. If you haven’t yet read those, please do take a few minutes to read them after this one.
When buying a property that has had substantial work done to it, you are placing a huge amount of trust in the seller. If there are problems which later are discovered you would be unlikely to have any rights to come back to them. Just because you walk into a refurbished house and it looks nice, does not mean that it is actually what it seems to be.
The quality of the materials used and the quality of the workmanship will be unknowns. These two factors will greatly determine the longevity of the work done. You also won’t know whether defects have been covered up.
The typical time-frame for poor workmanship to start to fail could be as little as 1 – 2 years. Many defects might start to appear around the 5 year mark. If the property can get to about 15 years after the work was done and there is still no sign of defects then it might be reasonable to hope that it wasn’t done too bad.
Anything related to moisture is the biggest issue for refurbished buildings.
The ‘top tip’ is to be ultra suspicious of everything and to request all the details of the work that has been done, the materials used and specifications, check that any formal Permissions are in place, and check out the people who did the work. Specifically check for when the house was last bought/sold. If it has been at auction a few months earlier, then you really need to be careful.
Disclaimer: Anything posted in this Blog is for general information only and it is not in any way intended to provide any advice, legal or otherwise, on any general or specific matter that you can rely on. You should always seek your own legal and surveying advice.