Your survey lists
the problems.
Not the prices.
A homebuyer report tells you what is wrong and then stops. What you need before you exchange is what it costs to fix, in writing, from someone who would actually do the work.
Defects without
numbers.
A survey is a list of conditions. It tells you the mortar is eroded, the flaunching is cracked, the wiring should be tested, the support above an opening could not be verified. What it does not tell you is what any of that costs.
Some reports include cost tables, and those are generic ranges rather than quotes for your property. They are a starting point for a conversation, not something you can take to a seller.
This is the practical problem at exchange. You have a document full of concerns, a deadline, and no idea whether you are looking at two thousand pounds or twenty. Estate agents know that, and a vague concern is easy to dismiss.
What changes a price conversation is a written quote from a contractor who would carry out the work. It converts an anxiety into a number, and a number is something both sides can argue about properly.
Read it, price it,
put it in writing.
Send us the report, or just the paragraphs that worry you. We will read them and tell you which items are genuinely costly, which are routine maintenance dressed in careful language, and which are the surveyor covering themselves rather than flagging a real problem.
That triage matters, because survey reports do not distinguish between the two. An item that reads alarmingly may be a fifty pound job, and an item buried in a paragraph about limitations may be the expensive one. Support above an altered opening that could not be verified is the classic example: it looks like a caveat and it can be the most significant thing in the document.
Where the work is something we would carry out, we quote it in writing. Where it needs opening up before anyone can price it honestly, we say so rather than putting a number on something nobody has seen.
There is no obligation attached to this. You may use the quote to renegotiate and then never speak to us again, and that is a perfectly reasonable outcome.
The items that
actually cost.
Across the reports we work from, the same items are consistently the ones that carry real money and are consistently the ones buyers overlook.
Retrospective structural support is the largest. Where a wall was knocked through, a chimney breast removed or an opening widened without verified support, resolving it involves opening up, an engineer's calculation, the structural work itself and then making good.
Access is the second. Anything above ground floor carries a scaffold cost that frequently exceeds the repair itself, which is why roof, chimney, gutter, fascia and upper pointing work should be planned as one visit.
Making good is the third and the most consistently missing. A rewire, a damp proof course or a structural repair all leave walls, floors and decoration to be put back, and that is often quoted separately or not at all.
Paperwork is the fourth. Where an alteration was never signed off, regularisation may require opening up and remedial work, and it is the item most likely to resurface at resale.
Before exchange is
a different conversation.
The leverage exists before exchange and largely disappears afterwards. Once you own the house, the defects are yours and the price is settled.
That means the useful window is short and it is usually the point at which you are busiest. Getting quotes organised in that window is genuinely difficult, which is why most buyers do not, and why most surveys result in no price adjustment at all.
Most reports recommend obtaining two or three written quotations before you commit. That is sound advice and we would give it too. We are one of the three.
If you are already past exchange, the work still needs doing and the same logic about sequencing and access applies. You have simply lost the negotiating half of it.
Questions we get
asked most.
Get a written
price.
Monday to Saturday, 9am to 8pm. All London boroughs.
Message us on WhatsAppSend the paragraph from your report and we will price the work it describes.
Pricing against an RICS report, item by item.
Reports written to the RICS Home Survey Standard follow a predictable shape. Elements are listed in order, each carries a condition rating, and the surveyor's wording tells you how confident they are. We price against that structure rather than rewriting it, so the quote runs in the same order as the report and you can read the two side by side without translating between them.
Where the report is a Level 3 survey the detail is usually enough to price from directly. Where it is a Level 2, surveyors often describe a defect without committing to a cause, and those items need a look before a number. We mark which is which on the quote rather than putting a figure against something nobody has investigated, and if an item needs a structural engineer rather than a contractor, we say so instead of pricing around it.
Areas we cover.
We take survey repair work across all 32 London boroughs. Most of our work is in west London, in Shepherd's Bush, Hammersmith, Fulham, Kensington, Chiswick and White City, and in south west London, in Putney, Wandsworth and Wimbledon. We also work in south east London, in Greenwich, Blackheath and Lewisham.
If your property is outside these areas, call us anyway. We travel across London and will tell you honestly if a job is too far to price properly.