Renegotiating or walking away
Why should you not put a price on a ‘further investigation’ line before the investigation has a result?
Because the line is a limit, not a repair. Until someone with the right brief has looked, you do not know whether the outcome is a small job, a large one, or nothing you need to do. Where the element is rating 3, the RICS wording points you to quotations or investigation before you commit. A round number for the unknown is not one of those quotations.
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?
Further investigation means the surveyor is not the specialist for that element: drains, timber, the structure, the electrics, an external wall. The next report might clear it. Pricing a clearance as if it were a failure is how buyers ask for money they then cannot justify. Waiting is uncomfortable. Inventing a figure is worse, because the seller can see that nobody has looked.
Instruct the specialist the sentence actually needs, with access agreed, and a fee you have been told. Then negotiate, or proceed, or leave, on the result. If the seller will not allow the investigation, that refusal is the fact to discuss with your solicitor. It is still not a price.
What should you ask your surveyor?
- What brief should the specialist have, in one sentence?
- What access do they need that you did not have?
- What outcome would change your advice, as distinct from a price?
What are the typical next steps?
- Commission the investigation, or accept that you are proceeding without it.
- Do not send the seller a figure for a result that does not exist yet.
- If access is refused, ask your solicitor what that does to the purchase. Do not invent a day rate as a penalty.
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
Is further investigation the same as rating 3?
It often sits inside a rating 3, because rating 3 includes urgent investigation. The words are the limit. They are not the specialist’s bill.
Can the original surveyor do the investigation inside the same fee?
Only if the quote said so. A specialist test is usually a new instruction.