What Does a Surveyor Check? Ireland's Pre-Purchase Survey

You've gone sale agreed, and everyone from your solicitor to your parents says the same thing: get a survey. But few buyers can say what a surveyor actually does for the money — what gets inspected, what gets a disclaimer, and what never gets looked at in the first place. Here is what a pre-purchase survey in Ireland covers, the three levels you can commission, and the checks that are not part of any surveyor's job — so nothing falls into the gap between the professionals.

The Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland (SCSI) defines three levels of pre-purchase survey, and asking for the right one matters more than most buyers realise:

Cost scales with depth. Published provider prices put a typical pre-purchase survey at €450–€799 depending on the property's size, age and location — the report-options guide compares what each tier of due diligence costs and covers.

A pre-purchase survey is a visual, non-invasive inspection: the surveyor examines everything that can be seen and reached without opening up the building. In practice that means:

• Roof and chimneys — coverings, flashings, ridge lines and rainwater goods, inspected from ground level and accessible vantage points.
• Walls and structure — cracking, bowing, settlement signs, the condition of render and pointing, and evidence of structural movement.
• Damp — moisture-meter readings at walls and floors, signs of rising damp, penetrating damp and condensation, and the state of any visible damp-proof course.
• Attic and floors — where there is safe access: timbers, insulation, ventilation, and signs of woodworm or rot.
• Windows, doors and finishes — condition, operation and weather-tightness.
• Services, visually — the visible parts of plumbing, heating and electrics. A surveyor notes their apparent age and condition but does not test or certify them; that is a job for an electrician or heating engineer if the report recommends one.
• Site and boundaries — drainage where accessible, boundary walls and fences, and anything on the site that looks inconsistent with what's being sold — flagged for your solicitor to check against the title.

Three whole categories of risk sit outside every survey type, however thorough the surveyor:

• The legal side. Title, rights of way, easements and contract conditions are your solicitor's territory. The surveyor may flag a boundary oddity, but resolving it is legal work.
• The price. A survey is not a valuation. Your lender's valuation, in turn, is a brief market-value check for the bank — not an inspection for you.
• The location's records. Flood history and OPW flood zones, EPA radon classification, mica and pyrite scheme designations, planning applications next door, recorded sold prices, BER records, crime statistics: none of this is visible from the property, so none of it is in a surveyor's report.

That third gap is the one buyers most often discover after closing. The house can be structurally perfect and still sit in a flood zone, a High Radon Area, or two fields from a granted planning application — the buying-a-house checklist walks through when each check belongs in the process.

The order matters. A data check costs a fraction of a survey and takes minutes rather than days, so run it before you spend survey money — and then hand the results to the surveyor:

• Address in an OPW flood zone or with recorded flood events nearby? Ask the surveyor to pay particular attention to damp-proofing, drainage and floor levels.
• County designated under the defective concrete blocks scheme? Ask about render cracking patterns, and see the mica and pyrite guide for what a data check can and cannot tell you.
• Poor BER for the house type and age? Ask what the insulation and heating actually look like up close.