Trafford Surveyors in Hale, Altrincham

We had a structural survey carried out on a Victorian property. Although the survey was quite detailed, We found on purchasing the property that there were many issues of deterioration on the exterior of the house that the survey had not highlighted, or had been reported inaccurately.
The pointing at ground level on various parts of the house at the side and rear had completely eroded to a full brick depth, this was not mentioned. Approx. half of the timber window frames were rotten and needed a lot of repair (the worst one was rotten right through to the inside) the survey only mentioned that they opened and closed satisfactorily. A ground level bay window roof was reported as being covered with Asphalt and slate, and reported no issues, but in actual fact part of it was just timber painted black, and this was completely rotten through - they can't of looked closely at this at all, and it is only seven feet from the ground. The airbricks in the walls of the property(vital to keeping floor joists rot free) were reported as being clear and unobstructed - but it turned out that most of them were blocked up with soil/cement - again poor attention to detail and would of taken 2 minutes to check properly. The roof space had been reported as having no visible issues, but we found that the steel plate holding one of the purlins (large horizontal support timber) to the wall was only partially secured - it had 2 of its 4 securing nuts missing - and this was right next to the loft hatch area. All in all the survey (which cost around £450) was lacking in attention to detail in critical area's, had we known about these issues we would of offered less for the house or even walked away. We had to spend considerable time and money putting the pointing right, repairing the window frames and doing a temporary repair on the bay roof until it can be replaced next year.