Guys, For very many years I have advocated that inspecting and testing should be mandatory.
In thr UK its a joke. Estate agents and mortgage brokers should tell clients as soon as they walk through the door that they will require a certificate for the property that they intend to bid for or sell.
It usually works like this:- They seldom tell them untill about a fortnight before completion then its a panic to get a report and cert. The report and cert are then used as a bargaining tool to try to negotiate a price reduction for the purchaser.
I agree with Trumpy the vendor should get a cert/ report for the property. Then if the buyer has a report done for his/her own piece of mind at least the two reports should run somewhere near parallel and conclude in a simular fashion.
I also think that most of the reports that I have come across are a complete waste of time, they only cover such things as mains bonding and the distribution board then conclude that the property needs a complete rewire. I have seen a good number of properties wired in pvc stripped out and rewired in pvc of a more inferior grade as a result of a B.S. report. As proffesional we should be giving our clients a report that they can understand and make an informed jugement on.
A cert with lots of one line deviations and the words sotisfactory or unsatisfactory is not good enough in my opinion.
Is the person who reads the reports competent enough to realise how seriouse or trivial some of the deviations are? I doubt it!
In nearly 40 years I have only ever had one person from a mortgage brokers/building society ring me up to enquire about what had been written on a certificate. I think that in itself speaks volumes.
