Survey: Home buyers often don’t consider all costs

A new survey from AA Legal Services shows that while most home buyers in the UK take care to shop for the best mortgage deal they can find, few take other steps to make sure that the house they are buying won’t cost them more money than necessary. In the survey, which included 1,200 British home owners, only 28 percent said they had gotten a structural survey of their property that went beyond establishing a valuation for purposes of their mortgage, and just 18 percent checked on the risk floods might pose to their property. Only 14 percent had sought an independent conveyancing service for transferring the legal title of the house from one owner to the other.

Many buyers don’t think to investigate how much it will cost to live where they are considering the purchase of a home. Only 29 percent checked on council tax rates where they planned to buy, while just 21 percent collected insurance quotes for their property. While 42 percent said they had done general research into the area before buying, only 26 percent looked into future building plans in the area. Eighteen percent visited the area during rush hour before they committed to a purchase, while only 15 percent introduced themselves to their prospective neighbors and just 11 percent made an effort to check noise pollution in their intended new neighborhood.

With the amount of money new home buyers must spend on their house, and with interest rates rising higher, many prospective buyers think they are saving time and money by not paying for surveys or making the effort to investigate the area they plan to move into in detail. On the contrary, they could well be costing themselves considerably more money in the long term.

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