Condition ratings
A rating 2 on a stair crack says monitoring is appropriate. Who starts that monitoring, given the inspection itself was a single visit?
Monitoring starts after the visit, not during it. You start it, or you instruct someone to start it, once the survey has said that monitoring is appropriate. The inspection was one attendance. One attendance cannot already be a programme of watching the crack over time. Rating 2 means repairs or replacement are needed but are not serious or urgent. It does not mean the watching has been done.
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?
Surveyors say monitoring is appropriate when they can see a crack that does not, on that day, justify the serious or urgent grade, and when the useful next fact is whether it moves. They cannot collect that fact by standing on the stair once. The rating records the day. The recommendation records what should happen next. If nobody marks the crack, dates a photograph, or agrees a way of measuring it, monitoring has not begun, however clearly the paragraph recommends it. The seller's memory that it has always been there is not a monitoring record either.
Decide who will do it and write that down: you, a surveyor on a new instruction, or another person whose job you define. A return visit months later can be part of monitoring only if it compares with a starting point. The first report is that starting description, not the series. Rating 2 is not rating 3, so do not borrow the rating 3 push for quotations and pretend the crack was graded urgent. Equally, do not file rating 2 as if the crack had been signed off. Normal maintenance is the rating 1 world. This crack is in the rating 2 world, with monitoring still to organise.
What should you ask your surveyor?
- What would count as starting to monitor this stair crack, since today was a single visit?
- Are you able to do that monitoring only under a new instruction?
- Is rating 2 your finished grade of what you saw, with movement still unknown?
What are the typical next steps?
- Treat the single visit as the starting description, not as completed monitoring.
- Agree who will watch the crack and how the first record will be kept.
- Do not regrade rating 2 as urgent, or as finished, in the meantime.
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 you buy the house, does the monitoring transfer automatically?
The crack transfers with the house. The monitoring only happens if someone continues it. The survey has not set up a contract to do that.
Does rating 2 mean you must repair before you move in?
No. Rating 2 is not the serious or urgent grade. It says repair or replacement is needed, but not as a rating 3 matter, and it has asked for monitoring.