Sarah Beeny’s New Property Show: Help! My House is Falling Down

Structural Survey

For most property professionals, especially surveyors, Channel 4’s latest property show, Help! My House is Falling Down with the fab Sarah Beeny, is a god send. At last a TV programme which should ensure property buyers purchasing a home pay for an independent full structural survey from a local qualified surveyor!

Sadly only 20% of buyers have a Home Report or Building/Structural Survey, many believing that the mortgage valuation and a lender saying ‘yes’ to a mortgage is all the proof they need that the property is worth what they are paying for it.

Anyone that has watched the first couple of Sarah Beeny’s new programme now knows that mortgage companies are all too happy to lend money to unsuspecting buyers. You also find out canny ways vendors have of covering up property problems!

If you are not a property professional however, and currently own a home, you may be having trouble sleeping at night after watching the show! Perhaps you are listening out for the ‘death beetle’ that appeared in one show or worrying whether your extension will have slipped into the ground during the night on another.

Kate Faulkner, Managing Director of Designs on Property and one of the UK’s top property experts has been obsessed with trying to get people to purchase an independent survey on a property for over 10 years. “It’s a nightmare, buyers would rather save £500 on a survey and then spend thousands on a kitchen when they move, not realising it's wasted money as the roof is leaking, or as in one of Sarah’s programmes, the kitchen subsiding into the ground!”.

Kate continues “For some reason buyers think that surveyors and estate agents are in ‘cahoots’ and therefore there is no point having a survey, others think that the mortgage valuation you pay the lender for will highlight any problems. It won’t!” What Kate really doesn’t understand is why on earth anyone would not spend around £500 on a survey that often ends up with you saving at least this money, if not thousands on the price a buyer originally offered.

So if you are worrying about your current home, or are thinking of buying and are now paranoid about what you buy, what can you do to make sure you don’t end up saying ‘Help! My house is falling down’?

Read Kate’s Top 10 Property Survey Tips for Homeowners

Or Kate’s Top 10 Property Survey Tips for Buyers


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