RICS Chartered Surveyors in York

The ground under York and the materials it built with

York sits in the Vale of York on soft, young deposits rather than on rock. The historic centre occupies the York Moraine, a low ridge of glacial sand, gravel and till that the Romans chose because it was the driest ground for miles in a landscape of marsh and river. Step off that ridge and the deposits change quickly to laminated clays, silts and river alluvium, sometimes within a single street. For a surveyor that variability is the point. Two houses in the same terrace can be founded on materially different ground, and shallow Victorian footings on soft alluvium behave differently from the same footings on the gravel ridge. Where we find cracking, the assessment turns on the pattern, the width, whether the crack tapers, whether it passes through the brick or follows the joints, and whether it is still moving.

One thing you will not find here is old coal workings. The Coal Measures that run under Leeds, Wakefield and much of the West Riding do not reach the city, so the Coal Authority mining report that dominates a survey twenty miles to the south west is simply not part of the conversation in York. That matters when you are comparing quotes and reports across the region: a crack in a York house needs explaining on its own terms rather than being attributed to something that was never underneath it.

The brick itself repays attention. Hand-made bricks fired locally before the railways are softer and more porous than anything produced since, and they were laid in a lime mortar chosen to be weaker than the brick so that any movement showed in the joint rather than the unit. Repoint that wall in hard cement and you reverse the relationship. Water that enters the wall can no longer leave through the joint, so it leaves through the face of the brick instead, and after a few hard frosts the face blows off and the wall starts to look pitted and sanded back. Cement render over soft brick does the same thing more comprehensively and hides the damage while it happens. Both are common across the older terraces and both are recorded in detail in our reports, because the repair is slow, skilled and expensive.

Limestone appears on the churches, the walls, the Minster and a handful of the better houses, and it has its own failure mode. Magnesian Limestone weathers by losing its surface in sheets and by blistering where a sulphate crust has formed, and it is badly damaged by cement pointing and by unsuitable cleaning. Where a property has limestone dressings, copings or a limestone plinth, the report comments on their condition separately from the brickwork, because the two materials need different repairs and different mortars.

Pantiles and timber frames: the two things a York survey turns on

A clay pantile roof is not a slate roof and should not be inspected as if it were. Slates are laid double lap, so every point on the roof has two thicknesses of covering above it. Pantiles are single lap. Each tile interlocks sideways with its neighbour and laps the course below, which makes the roof light and quick to lay but leaves it with almost no redundancy. Lift or slip one tile and you have an open hole rather than a thin spot. The tiles hang on a nib over a batten and, on most roofs built before the middle of the last century, there is no underfelt beneath them at all.

What kept those roofs weathertight was torching, a lime and hair mortar buttered onto the underside of the tiles between the battens to seal the gaps and stop wind driving rain and snow through. Torching has a finite life. It dries, loses its key and drops off in lumps, which is why a loft in an older York house often has a layer of sandy debris across the ceiling joists and daylight visible at the eaves. Once the torching has gone, a strong easterly will push rain and fine snow straight into the roof space, and the first evidence is usually staining on the bedroom ceilings rather than anything visible from the street. The report tells you where the covering sits in its life, whether the tiles themselves are sound or delaminating, whether nibs have broken, whether the battens are still holding a nail, and whether the verges and ridge are bedded or rotten. Relaying a pantile roof properly, with a breathable membrane and reclaimed or matching tiles where a conservation area requires them, is a substantial job and you should know it is coming before you exchange, not after.

The timber-framed buildings are the other York speciality. On the Shambles, Goodramgate, Stonegate and the surrounding lanes there are houses whose frames are five and six hundred years old, jettied out at first and second floor, sitting at angles that alarm people who have never seen one. Most of that lean is historic and long settled. A frame that has moved, found its position and stayed there for three centuries is not a structural emergency, and a report that treats it as one is not doing you any favours. What matters is whether the movement is live and what is happening at the points where the frame meets water: the foot of the posts, the sill beam at ground level, the ends of the bressummer beneath a jetty, and anywhere a later owner has run a concrete floor or a cement render up against old oak. That is where decay and beetle attack concentrate, and that is where an apparently cosmetic problem turns into a structural one. Inspecting a building like this properly means opening up nothing but understanding everything you can see, then saying plainly what needs a specialist look and what has been stable since the Georgians.

Defects we see most in York homes

Some faults turn up in our York reports far more often than anywhere else on our patch. These are the ones worth knowing about before you view.

• Slipped, cracked and nib-broken pantiles with the original torching gone, letting wind-driven rain into unfelted roof spaces across Holgate, South Bank, The Groves and Bishopthorpe Road.
• Cement render and hard cement pointing over soft hand-made brick, trapping moisture and blowing the faces of the bricks in frost, particularly on the weather-facing elevations of Victorian terraces.
• Decay at the feet of posts and at the ends of sill beams and bressummers in timber-framed buildings, usually where a later concrete floor, raised pavement or impermeable render has held water against the oak.
• Tide marks, salted plaster, replaced floors and blocked airbricks in cellars and ground floors near the Ouse and the Foss, together with tanking installed after a flood that has since pushed damp higher up the wall.
• Failed flat roofs on the two-storey rear outriggers of Victorian terraces, often felted several times over with no falls and no upstand where the roof meets the main wall.
• Unconsented work in listed buildings and conservation areas, including replacement windows, removed chimney breasts, rooflights on street elevations and internal partitions in Georgian townhouses converted to flats.
• Raised paths, drives and garden levels bridging or burying the damp-proof course in inter-war semis at Acomb, Clifton and Heworth, with damp then appearing at skirting level inside.
• Vaults and coal cellars extending under the pavement on Micklegate and Bootham, where the brick arch has been patched from above, the ventilation blocked and the ownership never established.

Buying in York: flooding, consents and the transaction timetable

Flooding is the defining property risk in this city and it needs handling with facts rather than nerves. Two rivers meet here. The Ouse drains a very large catchment coming down from the Dales, so it rises days after rain that fell somewhere else entirely, and the Foss is a small river that cannot discharge while the Ouse is high. That is what the Foss Barrier exists to manage: it closes the mouth of the Foss and pumps the water over into the Ouse. In November 2000 the Ouse reached levels not seen in living memory, and on Boxing Day 2015 the barrier was overwhelmed and had to be lifted, which is why the flooding that December reached streets along the Foss that had stayed dry in 2000. The pumping capacity has since been rebuilt and the defences raised in several places, and the picture today is better than it was, but a buyer still needs to know exactly where a specific property sits.

So the survey looks for the physical evidence and the report tells your solicitor what to ask for. We record tide marks and staining, plaster replaced only to a certain height, new floors in one room and old ones in the next, salts on the wall face, tanking systems, sump pumps, raised electrical sockets, flood boards and their fixings, and non-return valves on drainage. We ask whether airbricks have been blocked up and never reopened. Then the report directs your solicitor to obtain a flood search and to ask the seller directly, in writing, about past flooding and any insurance claims, because the practical question is rarely whether water can reach the door. It is whether the property can be insured at a sensible premium and excess, and what a reinstatement would actually involve once you take listed status and traditional materials into account.

The second York constraint is consent. The city has an exceptional concentration of listed buildings and a long list of conservation areas covering the whole historic core and much of the Victorian suburb beyond it. Where a property is listed, the listing covers the whole building inside and out, not just the frontage, and unauthorised alterations by a previous owner become your problem on completion. Our reports flag the work that looks as though it should have had listed building consent, and the alterations in conservation areas that should have had planning permission, so your solicitor can chase the paperwork while there is still time to do something about it.

The third is underfoot. York is one of only five places in England designated an Area of Archaeological Importance under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979, and beneath the central streets there are several metres of waterlogged, organically rich deposits that have survived precisely because they have stayed wet. That has two consequences a buyer should understand. Groundworks of any kind, a basement conversion, an extension with conventional strip foundations, underpinning, or even a soakaway, can trigger archaeological requirements and a cost and delay that people do not budget for. And where those deposits are allowed to dry out, through local dewatering or a change in drainage, they shrink, which is one of the recognised causes of settlement in this city. If your plans for the house involve digging, say so when you instruct us and the report will address it.

On timing, instruct the survey as soon as your offer is accepted and your solicitor is appointed. Good houses in Bishopthorpe Road, Bootham, Clifton and the villages go under offer quickly and agents expect buyers to move. We arrange access ourselves and we need the loft hatch unlocked, the cellar open and any vault or outbuilding accessible, because in York the loft and the cellar are usually where the story is. Tell the surveyor beforehand about anything that bothered you at the viewing, a stain on a bedroom ceiling, a musty cellar, a frontage that leans, and they will inspect with it in mind. You can ring and talk the findings through while they are fresh, and if something needs a specialist follow-up, a structural engineer's report or a timber and damp investigation, we can carry that out so you negotiate with figures rather than worries. The average repair bill for new home owners is around 5,750 pounds, and a survey exists to find exactly that sort of cost before you exchange rather than after you move in.

Other surveys and valuations we carry out in York

Alongside Level 3 Building Surveys and Level 2 Homebuyer Surveys, York clients instruct us for structural engineer's reports where movement looks active or a timber frame needs assessing, timber and damp reports on cellared terraces and on old oak, drone roof surveys where a steep pantile roof or a tall Georgian elevation cannot be seen safely from the ground, and valuations for probate, matrimonial settlements, Help to Buy redemptions and private sales within a family. Owners of converted townhouses and small blocks instruct us for building insurance valuations, which in a listed building need to reflect repair in matching materials rather than a modern rebuild, and for fire risk assessments of the common parts.

Commercial work in the city runs to hospitality and retail more than to industry. We are regularly asked to inspect cafes, restaurants, guest houses and small hotels in the centre, professional offices in converted townhouses, and workshops and units on the ring road estates. A tenant taking a lease on a historic building should have a photographic schedule of condition agreed at the start, because without one the repairing obligation in a York lease can become an argument about six hundred years of wear. We also advise on dilapidations claims, and we act on rent reviews and commercial valuations.

We cover the whole York area from one base, taking in Haxby, Copmanthorpe, Dunnington, Poppleton, Fulford and Tadcaster, and travel sits inside the fixed fee we quote, so the figure does not move because a house is in a village rather than the centre. The full list of what we do is on our Types of Survey page, and if the job you have in mind is not obviously on it, call and describe the property.