Your RICS Survey Flagged Problems But No Costs. Here's How to Price Them.

Your RICS survey has landed. Somewhere in those forty pages is a list of things wrong with the house, each one carefully rated and described, and not one of them carries a price. That is not an oversight — pricing repairs is not part of a surveyor's remit, and most will tell you so explicitly in the report.

Which leaves you holding a document that has successfully worried you and given you nothing to act on. This is how to close that gap.

If you want the shortcut, tick your findings into the RICS survey repair cost calculator — it takes the 57 findings that come up most often, prices each at 2026 rates, and sorts them into what needs doing now, what needs doing in a year or two, and what can wait.

Why the report has no numbers in it

A RICS survey is an inspection, not an estimate. The surveyor's job is to look, identify, rate and — where they cannot see the cause — recommend that somebody else looks harder. Putting a figure on the remedy would mean pricing work they are not going to carry out, on a building they have seen once, and it would expose them to a liability nobody is paying them to take.

So the report says the roof covering is nearing the end of its serviceable life. It does not say whether that means £900 of slipped slates or £18,000 of full re-roof, and those are both completely reasonable readings of the same sentence.

Sort every finding into three piles first

Before you price anything, separate the list. Almost every RICS survey resolves into three groups, and only one of them matters much.

Things you already knew. The kitchen is dated. The bathroom is tired. The decoration is not to your taste. These were visible at the viewing and are already in the asking price. Costing them is useful for your own budget and useless for negotiation — asking for money off because a 1990s kitchen is a 1990s kitchen is the fastest way to lose a seller's goodwill.

Things that genuinely change the value. A roof at the end of its life, a failed damp-proof course, an electrical installation that needs replacing, structural movement that turns out to be real. These are Condition Rating 3 items, they are work the buyer has to fund immediately, and they are the ones worth costing carefully.

Things that change whether you buy at all. Confirmed subsidence, dry rot through structural timber, Japanese knotweed within seven metres, a loft conversion with no building regulations sign-off and no route to regularising it. These need answering before anything else, because the answer might be that you walk.

What the common findings actually cost in 2026

Rough ranges for the findings that come up most, all for a typical three-bed house:

• Roof covering at end of life — £8,000–£18,000 for a full strip and re-cover. Slipped or missing tiles alone: £250–£900.
• Chimney stack repointing or defective flashings — £900–£3,500. A full rebuild: £2,200–£6,000.
• Rising damp or a defective damp-proof course — £2,000–£8,000, but check the external ground level first. A path or border bridging the DPC is the most common cause of what gets diagnosed as rising damp, and it is a few hundred pounds with a spade, not a chemical injection.
• Full rewire — £6,000–£12,000. An obsolete consumer unit on its own: £700–£1,500.
• Dry rot — £3,000–£20,000, depending entirely on how much structural timber is involved.
• Wet rot — £700–£4,500. Much less alarming than it sounds and frequently confused with dry rot in reports.
• Confirmed subsidence — £5,000–£45,000. This is the one finding where the range is wide enough that you genuinely cannot proceed without a structural engineer.
• Rotten timber windows — £4,000–£20,000 for a whole house. Individual repairs are far cheaper than most quotes assume.

Two things worth noticing. First, the gap between the bottom and the top of most of these ranges is larger than the discount you are likely to negotiate — which is why a builder's read on which end of the range you are at is worth more than the range itself. Second, several of the scariest-sounding findings are at the cheap end.

"Further investigation is recommended" is a task, not a verdict

The phrase means the surveyor saw a symptom and could not see the cause. It is an instruction to get a second opinion, not a judgement that the property is defective — and the investigations are cheap relative to what they settle:

• Structural engineer's report: £500–£1,200
• Drain CCTV survey: £200–£400
• Electrical Installation Condition Report: £180–£350
• Gas and boiler safety check: £120–£900

A £300 drain survey that rules out a collapse worth £8,000 is the best value in the whole transaction. Where the finding is serious, it is also entirely normal to ask the seller to fund the investigation — they benefit from the answer too, because if you walk they will face the same question from the next buyer.

Turn it into a schedule, not a worry

Sellers and agents do not respond to anxiety. They respond to a costed schedule: each Rating 3 item, what it is, what it costs, and a total. Buyers who bring one typically recover somewhere between half and all of the urgent repair costs. Buyers who forward the RICS survey with a note saying they are concerned usually recover nothing, because they have handed over a problem instead of a proposal.

There is more detail on the wording and the timing in our guide to how much you can negotiate off a house price after a RICS survey.

When the answer is to walk

Sometimes the numbers say don't. A RICS survey fee that stops you buying a £40,000 problem has done its job several times over, and there is no shame in pulling out — better a lost RICS survey fee than a house you cannot afford to put right. If you are a first-time buyer with no contingency behind you, that calculation is even more clear-cut.

Getting it costed

Reading a whole RICS survey and pricing every item on it is a couple of hours of a builder's time. That is what our £59 review is: you send the report, and you get back every finding translated into plain English, a realistic cost against each one, a priority order, and a view on what is worth taking back to the seller. Within 24 hours.

If you only have one question — is this crack serious, is this quote reasonable — ask it free. No card, no obligation.

Either way, do not stop at knowing what is wrong. The report is only half the information you need, and it is the half that cannot help you decide anything on its own.