Property CareHome › The Home Health Check
An honest read on your whole house.
You know something needs doing. You are less sure what, or how urgent, or whether the person telling you has an interest in the answer. So we sell the answer on its own, separately from the work, which is the only arrangement in which you can fully trust it.
A morning, and then something you can act on
We walk the whole property with you, inside and out, in no particular hurry. Roof line and gutters from the ground, external joinery, brickwork and pointing, the garden and its boundaries. Then indoors: every room, every window and door, the wet areas, the loft, the places nobody looks and the things you have stopped seeing because you pass them daily.
Within two working days you receive a written report, with photographs, arranged into four plain lists. What needs attention now. What to watch and roughly when. What is fine and should simply be left alone. And what belongs with a registered specialist rather than with us.
Everything carries an honest indication of cost, including the things we would not be doing. If your roof needs a roofer, the report says so and estimates what a roofer will charge, because a report that only recommends its author is not a report at all.
Four sorts of people, one relief
Recently moved in
The survey told you about the structure. It did not tell you what to actually do first, in what order, over the next two years. This does.
Been here twenty years
You have stopped seeing the house. A fresh pair of eyes finds the things familiarity has quietly filed away as normal.
Worrying about a parent's house
Adult children buy a great many of these. Somebody sensible walks the house, writes it down plainly, and the whole family finally has the same information.
Thinking about selling
Find out what a buyer's surveyor will find, while there is still time to fix it cheaply rather than negotiate against it expensively.
The earlier a pattern is recognised, the simpler the response usually becomes.The Book of Care · Chapter Seven
What this is not
This is not a structural survey, a RICS Home Survey, a valuation or a legal document, and it must not be relied upon as one. We are experienced property care people, not chartered surveyors, and if the house needs one of those we will tell you plainly and stop.
It is also not a sales pitch with a clipboard. The fee stands whether or not you ever ask us to do a single thing afterwards, and the report is yours to hand to anybody you like, including a competitor.
£250 for a typical house, including the visit, the photographs and the written report. Larger properties are quoted first. If you go on to book work with us within three months, the fee comes off the price of that work, so the advice effectively becomes free once you act on it.
The services on this site are starting points rather than a menu. They can be combined, taken apart, or reduced to the single job you actually want doing. If all you need is a curtain pole hung, a patch of damaged wall made good or a sticking door eased, ring and ask for exactly that.
Find out where you actually stand
Two or three hours on site, a written report within 48 hours, and no obligation to do anything with it at all.