Apologies if this has already been discussed in a previous thread.
We have finally found a house that we want to buy and we are looking for an architect or someone that can inspect the house and give us his feedback on the building.
Any recommendations will be highly appreciated. The house is located in the Basel area
Thanks!
Have you found someone to help you? We have found a house right now and are looking for someone ...
The potential buyer for our property wants to organize an inspection by an engineer.
Our house was built in 2009. The builder offers a 30 year warranty which tranfers to the new owner.
Just wondering what to expect.
Coming from the UK I expected this to be required by the bank, so I asked them where to find an architect/engineer and they looked completely blank. Then they assumed I wanted to do some improvements and add an improvement part to the mortgage leading to complete confusion all round. In the end the actual answer was "you don't need that here".
Hopefully not an Elbonian fella with a hammer and a drill wanting to make sure the walls are not empty inside
He never checked all the obviously places with potential problems such as damp.
Useless waste of money (but not mine).
As noted by others, unless you pay a lot an inspection will probably be pretty superficial and doesn't have any guarantees attached.
If you're reasonably confident about structural stuff then there are lots of lists of what to check online. I took at least a couple of hours to check our house before buying. The previous owner didn't complain about me poking all the exposed wood, climbing behind the oil tank and feeling everywhere for damp, I think he thought it was quite interesting but that I was a bit mad.
When we renovated with a different architect we found the same thing. We had to include the architect in the project in order to get the permits and the construction manager who was recommended to us. But the architect knew little - or simply was completely uninterested - in actual bricks and mortar. I don't know if that is common here, but two out of two...
Next time, a Bauleiter or engineer.
But I still wouldn't buy a house without an inspection, new build or ancient farmhouse. I've seen horrors hiding in walls here. I'm sort of a 'relatively savvy layman', and OH certainly knows his way around a tool box.... but we still don't know enough about Swiss construction regs, and more importantly historical practices, to do a thorough inspection on our own. There are so few buyer protections here, spending a few thousand to (try to) safeguard a few million is still IMO a necessary investment.
I'm astonished as to how much electrical insulation tape was used for the initial installation. I didn't realise that was the real "Swiss norm".
Still, that's beaten by the electrical socket in the basement tied to the wall with a piece of string!
(And before anyone suggests that this may all have been done by the previous home owner, I've got a breakdown of the cots of this and other renovations which runs into six figures in total).
And don't even mention Wago connectors - did they not have more than a 3-way connector in the "olden days"? Connecting five or six cables shouldn't require three Wago (and then multiply by live, earth, neutral)!
The house was built by Schwoerer Haus in Germany. An architect from the region designed it, and a local building company did the construction up to the point where Schwoerer Haus did their part. Specific companies were hired to install things such as the lift. All of these people are still around. We have the house plans, which are available online through the builder's customer portal.
The electrician who worked on the house, and the plumber, both local firms, are still in business.
We have not had the electrical check as when we bought it we were told it wasn't required.
We didn't have an inspection done when we bought it. We asked a lot of questions and the agent had to go chase the information from the owner. She had left the country and clearly she didn't know much as her late husband looked after everything. What the agent did hide from us was this XL dog door in a wall leading to the outside. There was something in front of it on both sides. When we got the keys the house still wasn't emptied as it should have been so we still didn't see the dog door It has since been closed.
An inspection might have found the dog door. Only thing else which might have been revealed was a hornet's nest outside a second floor window, and a cracked solar panel. Difficult to say.
We have sold 4 properties privately. No one ever asked for an inspection. Maybe they could see that the properties were very well maintained and we were up front about everything. 2 of the properties were building land and that can be very complicated as there are many rules.
I think the challenges the buyers will have is finding someone they can communicate with and since wood construction like Schwoerer Haus is not common in the Ticino region, finding someone who is familiar with this type of construction. We know people but the buyers would probably not trust anyone we suggested.
We once looked at a property where there were cracks inside. We had an architect visit the property. He brought a hammer. He said he had never seen a house built like it and he didn't mean that in a positive way. We didn't buy it.
So this is going to be rather interesting I think. Thanks for everyone's input.
If your buyers want one done, your involvement really should only be to agree to a date. You don't even have to be there. Let the buyer do the work - you have enough on your plate with the sale as it is.
Good luck with the sale!