Stage three outside
Out to the back wall
Half of what a house will cost to put right is only visible from the garden, with your back to the boundary and the whole rear elevation in one view. That is where the walk goes next, and it is where the walk ends.
Descriptions of fabric and ground conditions here are what a walk can see. Anything structural or below ground belongs to a surveyor or an engineer.
01
The rear elevation, seen whole
From the middle of the lawn the back of the house can be read in one go. The gutter line tells you whether the fascia has been renewed or merely painted. The roof of the back addition tells you which way water is being sent and whether it is being sent into the junction with the main wall. Brickwork below the first-floor cills shows where a downpipe has been splashing for years, and the colour difference where an old opening was filled in is usually still faintly visible.
Flat roofs are looked at from an upstairs window rather than guessed at from below: a sag in the middle, a lip at the edge, a patch of fresh felt over something older. A flat roof is a maintenance item, not a defect, provided it is a known one.
02
The garden and the fall of the ground
Which way the ground falls decides most of what the garden does in winter. A patio laid up against the brickwork and higher than the internal floor will push water where it should not go, however new the slabs are. Gullies get looked at with the grating lifted where it lifts, and a hose on the downpipe shows quickly whether the water leaves or gathers.
Trees are judged for distance from the building and species rather than for appearance, and anything large and close is a question for somebody qualified before it is a question about pruning. Outbuildings are counted but treated as sheds until their bases prove otherwise.
03
The boundary, and whatever next door has leaned on it
At the end of the garden the questions are ownership and condition. Which side the fence posts stand, whether the line matches the title plan, what has been built up against the party wall from the other side, and whether a neighbour's lean-to is being supported by a wall this company would be buying. None of that is settled from a garden; it is settled by solicitors with the title in front of them. The walk only finds the questions worth asking.
04
The street, which in our case is Hayes
This company works in and around Hayes in the London Borough of Hillingdon, which is where its office is and where its walking is done. The housing is largely inter-war and post-war semis and terraces with a scattering of later infill, which means the same handful of floor plans repeat for street after street.
That repetition is the most useful thing about the area. When a plan has been walked many times, the house that has been altered badly announces itself from the pavement, and the house that has been altered well does too. No claim is made here about what anything in Hayes is worth, now or later; that is a matter for the market and for whoever is advising a buyer.
05
How a finished house leaves again
When the work is done the house is sold in the ordinary way. If an agent is instructed to market it, that agent is working for this company as the owner of the property, and the sale itself goes through solicitors like any other. What this company offers a buyer is a house it has walked end to end and can answer questions about, including the awkward ones about what was found and what was done.
The walk is over at the back wall. The only remaining page is the one that explains what happens to an email you send, and the address itself is viewings@garibproperty.space.