FAQ’s

There are always exceptions, but the general rules are as follows:

1) Only use specialist dilapidations surveyors: Particularly in a recession

2) Never spell dilapidations with an 'e': As this will mark you as a novice client - never a good thing

3) Never instruct purely on price: Cheap rarely means good, particularly if its from a big national surveying firm that boasts both low hourly rates and a powerful marketing department to replace all their dissatisfied former customers.

4) Only use a busy specialist: Like good dentists, good dilaps surveyors can save you a lot of pain quickly, so unless they have just set up, they don't need to advertise for new clients - they are too busy dealing with their existing customers and referrals.

5) Big practice experience: To get the volume of dilapidations work needed to quickly build up expertise, a good dilaps surveyor needs to start work in a big practice. Like your local GP Doctor, small practice building surveyors have to be 'jack-of-all-trades', they work hard to learn just a little more than their client to blag the odd dilaps instruction, but rarely do enough dilaps work to build up expertise and rarely do well against a 10 yr + big practice specialists.

6) Less that 10 years specialist dilapidations experience: Any big practice surveyor with less that 10 years specialist dilapidations experience is still learning the trade. As the definition of a specialist is 'someone who has made all the mistakes possible in one narrow field', it's essential to only use dilaps specialists well past the fledgling stage - you can't afford to have them learn on your job.

7) More that 10 years specialist dilapidations experience: Any big practice surveyor with 10+ years specialist dilapidations experience has learnt their trade and is now focused on promotion, growing teams, writing budget projections, attending internal meetings, signing travel expenses, taking clients to lunch and generally climbing the greasy pole. Apart from attending the first client meeting to help win your instruction for their novice team, they stopped actually doing dilaps work years ago.

8) The sweet spot:So ideally you need to find an (ex) big practice surveyor, with 10 years+ specialist dilaps experience, who left to set up their own practice (successfully) three or four years and is now hungry for new clients. As you are reading this, you are in luck! 😉

12 -18 months before lease-end

No, you should never serve the break notice, you should always get your solicitors to do this.

No, never accept the landlord's initial claim - it's almost always overstated. They expect you to haggle - think of the market scene in Life of Brian

No. Your landlord almost certainly hasn't forgotten and if you receive an inflated terminal schedule just before lease end you are out of options. Tenants normally get the biggest savings by having their own team prepare a liability assessment, have contractors price it and make the landlord aware they have to accept your reasonable offer or you will complete the works before lease end. We can help you with this assessment, just give us a call.

Eight: The first is a building surveyor, helped by an M&E engineer, who describes where the bulb is, why it needs to be changed and roughly how much a replacement will cost; the third specialist checks over the first two's workt; the fourth organises the contractor to replace the bulb; the fifth works out whether the defective bulb impacted the investment value of the building; the sixth (helped by another M&E engineer) argues that the bulb didn't need to be changed, and; the eight produces a detailed valuation report that explains why the blown bulb doesn't reduce the investment value of the building

We aim to settle landlord and tenant claims before or shortly after  lease end and achieve that in the overwhelming majority of case. However, a very small minority run for years and years

No. Tenant's lease breaks are called 'conditional breaks' because they only allow a tenant to end their lease early if they comply with certain obligations before a given date. Some of those obligation can be easily achieved, others may be technically impossible to achieve - for example where the tenant is obliged to have have complied with all the terms of the lease.

Other less difficult example include obligations to give vacant possession, have paid all outstanding amounts, even tiny previously unclaimed late payment interest, and to have overpaid the full quarters rent and service charge paid past the break date.

Yes