Surveyor Negligence - Finding an expert
“Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing.” Take a bow, Konrad Lorenz!
I spent far too long yesterday looking for an expert to help me with a case. On the way home on the train, I spotted Lorenz’ words in the newspaper. How fitting.
Rebecca had been looking for a house in the Cambridge area and had set her heart on a quaint three-bed cottage. Naturally, she employed a surveyor to inspect the property before buying it. The agreement between Rebecca and the surveyor was for him to report on the state of the property, detailing any defects, structural issues and an estimated cost of repairing any defects. Rebecca wanted peace of mind in buying an old property and if there were significant problems with her dream home she envisaged using the report to renegotiate the price or pull out. When she received the report, Rebecca was delighted to find there were no major concerns. Based on this report, she went ahead and brought the property.
Unreported problems
You can see where this is going. Rebecca moved in and soon found an array of problems not listed in the surveyor’s report. There were problems with the chimney stack and the dormer roof which both needed reconstructing. The gutters, drains, doors and windows needed repairing. The cost of sorting the chimney stack alone was £9,000 and overall costs may well have exceed £30,000 - money Rebecca hadn’t bargained for.
Rebecca phoned us to ask for advice on what to do. She was upset the faults hadn’t been picked up before she bought the house. If they had, she might have renegotiated a much lower price or pulled out of the sale entirely. She thinks she is a victim of surveyor negligence because they had failed to report on the defects.
Surveying the surveyor
We’ve had no joy getting the surveyor to admit fault in the professional negligence claim, so I’ve been trying to find a local expert surveyor to provide a report on whether the earlier report ought to have been reasonably expected to pick up the defects. It’s been quite a job! Whilst all surveyors ought to be experts their field, not every surveyor is an expert in reporting on surveyor negligence claims. On top of that, even where I managed to find surveyors who prepare reports on surveyor negligence, some told me they couldn’t complete the work because it was a residential property. Others said they couldn’t complete the work because the house was built before a certain date. Some couldn’t comment upon property valuations and so ruled themselves out!
Luckily, I’ve eventually managed to find someone to do the report and we’ll soon see whether this backs up my impression that Rebecca can sue her surveyors in negligence for failing to report on defects and failing to get the valuation right.
