A homeowner says she has been forced to spend £32,000 eliminating a decade of dry rot which a “useless” home report failed to reveal.
Eleanor Yearwood slammed the system which requires sellers to pay hundreds of pounds for a document which she claims is “not worth the paper it’s written on”.
The 55-year-old moved from Berkshire to Perthshire last July and the home report for her Alyth property flagged up no abnormalities.
However, since then, she has discovered that the wood in the property is riddled with fungus, which is costing thousands to eliminate.
She said experts have told her the dry rot has been present in the property for longer than she has owned it, estimating that it had worked its way through the building over a period of at least 10 years.
“The dry rot is going to cost me £32,000 to fix,” said Eleanor. “It’s a lot of money to pay when I bought the house in good faith, thinking that the papers were right.
“I’ll have to pay that personally as I have no insurance and it’s not covered anywhere.
“There was a mushroom a fungus, actually growing out the side of a door.
“I have had to have the roof removed, a new lintel put in and the front of my house has had to come off.
“The home report has so many get-out clauses and so many people have told me they are not worth the money. If everybody knows this, then why do we still have this system? It’s completely unfair.”
Eleanor added that she had trusted the home report documentation she was provided with for her new home.
She said: “When I lived down south I lived in brand new houses and I’ve never bought an older property before, so you just believe what it says is fine. They (the firm behind the report) didn’t go into the eaves and check them.
“When I sold my house in England, the surveyor was there for four hours and he checked absolutely everything, he opened every single drawer in the kitchen and I just assumed that this thing was just as thorough.”