How can flat-lining volumes be leading to backlogs in the surveying community?
The problem is that the number of surveyors has plummeted over the last four years. Declining business volumes have clearly had an impact. Those firms who focussed too heavily on mortgage-related valuations found themselves unable to diversify quickly enough and those that focussed too heavily on sub-prime work probably fell foul of the administrator.
As for the cost of staying in business in certain sectors of the market fees have gone south and all over the place fuel has rocketed as, indeed, so has the other business essential – Professional Indemnity Insurance.
Now though, there’s more work than the remainder can deal with.
Like a straight valuation, the Homebuyer’s Report is completed by a qualified chartered surveyor. But unlike a valuation, it tells consumers about the condition of a property, and helps them identify possible problems that could help with price negotiations.
Just as it took Sir Alex five or six years to build Manchester United into a hugely successful team, giving an independent and expert view on the property’s value takes time. It can take four hours to complete a Homebuyers Report. Quality counts – but in terms of time, it also costs. All that lovely information takes hours of surveying time to put together. And not many surveyors have got the hours.
How should surveyors find more time? Could this be a rallying cry for local independent surveyors to get back in the game? Certainly that seems to be the first of those unintended consequences I mentioned earlier.
The second unintended consequence is the risk of people being spread so thin. Recruiter Randstad recently said property professionals are trying to fit 7.5 working days worth of work into every week. When that happens, that’s when corners get cut, and mistakes get made. And such blunders make it all too easy for fraudsters to take advantage of the system.
It’s the equivalent of Ferguson’s early struggles and slippages, slowly getting the team to play in a slightly different style. Adaptation and modernisation are vital – and this is no time for complacency on fraud.
Mark Blackwell is managing director of xit2
