A couple who bought a £1.2m dream home in Devon that turned out to be so leaky they feared leaving it in case it rained have won hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation from the surveyor who looked at the property before they bought it.
In a judgment handed down last Friday (22 May), deputy high court judge Roger ter Haar ruled that, had surveyor Richard Large not given negligent advice, owners Chris and Kerry Hart would not have bought the property.
The Harts bought the property, on a hilltop location in rural Devon, in 2011, shortly after it had been refurbished, according to the judgment.
Before buying it, they engaged now-retired surveyor Large to carry out a homebuyer report, which highlights potential issues using a traffic light system. The only “red” item related to a problem with drainage.
However, evidence in the trial shows that there were large leaks before the Harts bought the property, and after.
In a witness statement, Mrs Hart said that it was “not possible to describe in a few short paragraphs the devastating impact that the disastrous purchase of the house has had on our family”.
“We have not just been living in a leaking, defective and dangerous house since we moved in eight years ago,” she added. “We have also endured attempted remedial works to the property which have left large sections of our home unusable. During such periods our home has had staircases boarded up, windows boarded up, scaffolding preventing doors and windows from being opened, for months at a time, in hot weather.
“Rooms out of use – for example the garden room had the ceiling taken down, and it stayed down for about 1½ years. When the ceiling was finally replaced, we had the ceiling redecorated. The decorators were sympathetic to our situation and they worked overtime in their attempts to give us a usable room in time for Christmas. They had almost completed the job when, just a few days before Christmas, the leaks started to seep through the freshly decorated ceiling again.”
She said that they “would never have considered purchasing the property at all if we had known it had any significant faults”.
At the centre of the case is the usefulness, or otherwise, of the homebuyer report, which is based on a “visual inspection” of a property and is “designed for lay clients who are seeking a professional opinion at an economic price”. The Harts argue that the surveyor was negligent because he should have recommended a building survey.
In his ruling the judge agreed. “I gained the firm impression that a purchaser in the position of the Harts could be left in the position where the report they had contracted the surveyor to provide could be wholly or partly worthless because all it would in truth be saying would be, ‘I see no reason not to suppose that everything was done properly when the building was redeveloped/refurbished,’” he said.
“In my view, the only ways that the surveyor can protect the prospective purchaser are: (1) to spell out the limitation on the advice given; (2) to be particularly alert to any signs of inadequate design or faulty workmanship; and (3) to draw attention in appropriate terms to protections available to the purchaser, including (on the facts of this case) a Professional Consultant’s Certificate.”
In this case, he said, Large should have recommended a Professional Consultant’s Certificate. As he didn’t, the judge said, he was negligent.
He said the Harts should be paid £750,000 in compensation. However, the Harts had also been suing their solicitors, Michelmores, and the architects who designed the refurbishment, Harrison Sutton, as well as their surveyor.
However, just before the trial, Michelmores and Harrison Sutton settled with the Harts, and paid them £376,000, the judge said. Therefore, he reduced the £750,000 to £374,000, and added an extra £15,000 “for inconvenience and distress”.
(1) Mr Chris Hart (2) Mrs Kerry Hart v (1) Mr Richard Large (2) Michelmores LLP (3) Harrison Sutton Partnership
Helena White (instructed by Wright Hassell LLP) appeared for the claimants. Simon Wilton (instructed by Kennedys LLP) appeared for the defendants.
