A house has no building management to make decisions for you: the roof, the drainage, the boundaries of the plot and the compliance of past works all become your decisions on the day you sign. This page brings together what you need to have checked before writing an offer, and then points to the market in each city.
What nobody tells you.
Real prices, hidden costs and the traps to check before you commit.
A house has no building management to make decisions for you: the roof, the drainage, the boundaries of the plot and the compliance of past works all become your decisions on the day you sign. This page brings together what you need to have checked before writing an offer, and then points to the market in each city.
Written by the ting.ad editorial team
These three gaps have one thing in common: they are either priced before the offer or absorbed after it.
In an apartment building, decisions are pooled and their cost is spread across dozens of owners. In a house there is nobody else. The roof, the boiler, the drainage and the fencing are yours alone, at the moment they fail, and rarely at a moment you would choose. The purchase price is therefore only part of the commitment — the part you negotiate, not the part that costs.
The roof, the windows and doors, the heating system and the drainage each have a lifespan. A well-kept house where everything reaches the end of its life at the same time costs more than an average house that has already been renovated.
The garden, a pool and any outbuildings are not neutral extras: they add property tax, upkeep and time. They are often what decides how easily the house resells.
A conservatory, a loft conversion, an extension: a change made without permission remains a planning problem, and it becomes yours. The planning history and past permissions should be requested before the offer.
None of these gaps is a hidden defect: it is available information that simply has to be read at the right moment.
The same house, described twice: once by a forty-minute viewing, once by the survey reports and the planning documents.
Space, light, a recent kitchen and a well-kept garden. A viewing tells you faithfully what it feels like to live there — and almost nothing about what the house is going to cost.
What it changesyou decide on comfort and discover the bill afterwards.
A poor energy rating, a private drainage system found non-compliant at its last inspection, an extension built without permission, a plot in a zone exposed to clay shrink-swell subsidence. Each of these points has a known cost and a known timescale.
What it changesyou negotiate on quotes rather than on an impression.
These five points can be checked in advance, and each one is a negotiating argument you can put a figure on.
Five items decide the real cost of a house. None of them appears in a photograph; all of them can be checked before the offer.
Every step pushed later in the sequence costs you money or negotiating power.
Buying a house is a sequence, not a search followed by a signature. The order of the steps changes the final price.
The age of the housing stock, the type of ground, connection to mains drainage and the pressure on land vary from one town to the next. In some cities a house is a city-centre product; in others it means the outskirts, a car and a daily commute that weighs more heavily than the price per square metre.
Each city page takes these questions for one market in particular: neighbourhoods, the prices actually being paid, what living there is like and the specific things to watch in that local market.
No search filter will tell you whether the roof will last another ten years, whether the extension was declared, or whether the street is still quiet on a Saturday morning. These are things people know, not things a database contains.
So Ting starts with you: a sentence about your situation, then a group call with local agents who know these streets and these houses. Several opinions on the same market, at the same time, before you commit to anything.
Related questions
It depends on the country, but the usual set covers the energy rating, a disclosure of natural and environmental risks, asbestos and lead depending on the year of construction, the condition of older gas and electrical installations, the plot boundaries or measurements, an inspection of any private drainage system and a pest report in areas affected by termites. Ask the seller for everything that applies locally before you make an offer.
The sale can still go ahead: the inspection report is simply attached to the contract. Bringing the system up to standard then falls to the buyer, often within a set period after the purchase. It is a cost known in advance, and therefore a legitimate point of negotiation.
By asking the seller for the corresponding planning permissions, and by checking with the local planning authority, which can confirm the planning history of the plot. Unauthorised construction does not prevent the sale, but it passes the regularisation file on to you and can block your own resale later.
Generally yes, at comparable value: there are no service charges, but every item they would cover still exists and arrives all at once. The difference is not the total amount; it is the absence of smoothing and of a shared schedule of works.
It is not compulsory, and it is rarely wasted on an older house. A visit from a roofer and a heating engineer before the offer costs little compared with the items involved, and gives you real figures on which to discuss the price.
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