Valuation Surveying in a High-Rate, Low-Transaction Market: Evidencing Value with Sparse Comparables
By March 2026, the RICS Residential Market Survey recorded a house price net balance of approximately -15%, with respondents across the UK describing a market where borrowing costs remain stubbornly high and closed sales data is so thin that valuers are confronting what practitioners now call "valuation blind spots" [6]. For the chartered surveyor asked […]
Party Wall Surveying for Garden Rooms and Outbuildings: When ‘Permitted Development’ Still Triggers the Act
Nearly one million garden rooms and outbuildings were added to UK properties in the five years following the 2020 shift to home working — and a significant proportion of those owners had no idea they were triggering legal obligations under the Party Wall etc. Act 1996. The assumption is almost universal: "I've got permitted development […]
Retrofitting and Damp-Proofing Disputes: How Building Surveyors Protect Buyers When Energy Upgrades Go Wrong
Over 700,000 UK homes received some form of insulation or energy retrofit upgrade in 2023 alone — yet industry data consistently shows that a significant proportion of those installations are later found to have introduced new moisture problems rather than solving old ones. For buyers purchasing a property where retrofit work has already been carried […]
