Seller-side surveys
The buyer wants the seller to pay for a structural engineer before exchange. Does the home survey order the seller to do that?
No. The home survey does not order the seller to pay for a structural engineer before exchange. It can recommend further investigation. It cannot instruct the seller, set a deadline, or make that recommendation a term of the sale. Who pays, and whether the work is done before exchange or not at all, is a negotiation between buyer and seller. The report is advice to its client. It is not an order on the other party. The question of funding sits with the solicitors. The survey has not decided it.
Last reviewed 24 October 2026. Written for buyers in England and Wales unless this answer says otherwise. No named surveyor has signed this page. It is general guidance, not a report on your house, and not legal advice.
What is the fuller explanation?
Sellers sometimes agree to fund a report because they want the sale to continue. Sometimes they refuse, and the buyer instructs the engineer or walks away. Both are commercial outcomes. Neither is written into a home survey by the fact that a crack was described. In England and Wales the private report is not a Scottish Home Report, and even a Home Report does not function as an order that the seller must hire an engineer. Do not read a recommendation as a direction the seller has already breached.
Ask your solicitor to put the request to the seller in the negotiation, and decide what you will do if the answer is no. If you need the engineer’s view before exchange, be ready to instruct it yourself rather than waiting for a survey to compel the seller. Keep the survey’s technical recommendation separate from the question of who writes the cheque. The inspection did not, and cannot, order the seller to fund that visit.
What should you ask your surveyor?
- What investigation did you recommend, and who did you say should instruct it?
- Did the report avoid ordering the seller to pay?
- What in the crack note is a technical limit rather than a contract term?
What are the typical next steps?
- Read the recommendation as advice, not as an order on the seller.
- Ask your solicitor to negotiate who instructs the engineer.
- Be ready to instruct the engineer yourself if you need the answer.
Costs vary with the building and with who you instruct. Where this page does not cite a published figure, ask the surveyor, a relevant specialist, or your solicitor for a written quote. Do not treat a forum average as the price.
Also asked about this
If the survey says further investigation is urgent, must the seller fund it?
Urgency is about the building, not about who pays. The home survey still does not order the seller to fund an engineer before exchange. Your solicitor can press the point in the negotiation. A refusal leaves you to instruct the engineer, renegotiate, or decide the risk is too great. The report does not make that choice for the seller.
Can you deduct an engineer’s fee from the price because the survey suggested one?
Not by the survey’s authority. A deduction is an agreement, or it does not happen. The report recommended an investigation. It did not price a fee and it did not order the seller to fund one. Ask the solicitor to deal with any figure in the negotiation. Do not present the survey as if it had already settled the bill.