French property surveys

Why commission a property survey?

Buying a property is generally the largest single investment a person or couple may have to decide upon.  It is surprising therefore how many will do so without any proper professional advice.

The tales of woe that sometimes follow are not surprising in such circumstances and it is important people should be aware of the dangers that can lurk when careless enthusiasm is allowed to run riot.

When purchasing real estate, property developers regularly have recourse to general advice and to property surveys from independent professional experts despite their own experience in property and construction.

Many banks and other organisations financing property purchases will impose a valuation when lending funds.  However the inspections are limited more often than not to only what is required to prepare the valuation to verify for them only the financial security of their funding. 

Valuations do improve the odds with or without contract but do not guarantee against the future discovery of problems that would have been spotted with proper and more detailed survey inspections and reports.

Commissioning proper independent professional advice for oneself in the purchase of a property is all the more important for less experienced people, particularly when they are governed by a tight budget and are purchasing with a foreign currency in a land whose language they may not fully understand.  There are also the different laws, regulations and custom with which they are even less likely to be conversant.

Our Principal has many years of wide ranging experience in this field in France in addition to the UK where he was an expert witness also in this field.  He prepares his reports in English or in French.

Mandatory diagnostic reports

French culture and custom is such that valuations, let alone surveys, are commissioned much less frequently than in the UK and other countries.  This gave rise to so many tales of woe the French government resorted to making property sales subject in defined circumstances to mandatory diagnostic reports by licensed specialists and this trend is set to continue.  Our first monthly Newsletter next January will include a detailed article in this respect.

There is no point the same work being undertaken twice.  Nor do we wish to become licensed specialists to end up providing mandatory diagnostic reports exclusively to recoup the heavy investment required for the licences to the detriment of our availability to provide other services sought regularly by our clients.

The subjects of these reports are therefore normally excluded from our survey instructions.  Evidence is however inevitably still noted in the course of our inspections.  We compensate by including this ex gratia in our reports and by providing an assessment report later on upon the mandatory diagnostic reports.

Different types of surveys provided 

We will provide you with a correct analysis of the general condition of the portions and elements covered by your brief and instructions and of the implications that accompany this for the future.  It is not our role to deter you from purchasing the property so problem areas are addressed with a balanced approach.

No survey is too great or too small although travel distance can handicap cost efficiency in smaller instances where a more local surveyor could be a more appropriate choice for the survey, particularly if assistance may also be required subsequently for building works.

Properties can vary considerably in size and condition.  Purchasers will have different budget considerations and requirements.  Each survey must therefore be considered in its own light.

We will need a brief on the size and condition of the property and on the extent of the survey desired, including any special requirements, to confirm instructions and make our proposition in writing.

In order to respond to differing client constraints on timing and budgets, we have evolved our services in this field into several categories.  These range from a brief visit (sometimes accompanied by our client) and a verbal description only of the general state of the structures only, through to an extensive inspection and a full written report on both the structures and the services together with explanations, advice and suggestions on improvements, remedial works that may possibly be required and future maintainance.

There may be other separate and special client requirements to be attended to in addition to the survey.  The main examples are summarised under our page for General Services.

Having carried out our inspection and attended to any other additional associated matters possibly included in the instruction, we provide an initial verbal summary by telephone prior to preparing our report.

Our written reports, even the smallest, are not just a few pages in length as provided by some other professionals.  They have reached close to fifty pages in a few instances.  They are structured, clear and concise albeit they are also detailed.