Home Reports: what sellers and buyers each pay for
The short answer
The seller commissions and pays for the Home Report - £585 to £820, before marketing - and every interested buyer gets it free. Buyers can rely on it: the Single Survey comes from a RICS surveyor who owes a duty of care to buyer and lender as well as seller, and most lenders will lend against its valuation. What buyers still sensibly pay for themselves: a deeper survey on older or altered properties, and specialist checks the report recommends.
The split, side by side
| Seller | Buyer | |
|---|---|---|
| Commissions and pays for the report | Yes, before marketing | No - receives it free |
| Chooses the surveyor | Yes | No, but their lender must accept the firm |
| Can rely on the Single Survey | Yes | Yes - the surveyor owes buyers a duty of care |
| Valuation for the mortgage | Provided in the report | Most lenders use it; some revalue |
| Deeper investigation if warranted | Only if fixing before sale | Their choice, their cost |
This is the system working as designed: one professional inspection shared by everyone, instead of five competing buyers each paying for their own survey on the same house - the wasteful English model the Scottish reforms replaced.
When a buyer should still buy their own advice
The Single Survey is a genuine condition report (the three parts are unpacked here), but it's a standardised one. Buyers should consider their own deeper survey when the property is old, extended, unusually constructed or visibly altered; when the report recommends further investigation (damp, timber, roof, electrics) - those referrals are the surveyor telling you where their inspection stopped; and when the home has been on the market long enough that the report predates recent weather or works. And if the valuation causes friction, that's a negotiation problem more than a survey problem - it has its own guide.
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Compare surveyor quotesCommon questions
Can a buyer sue the surveyor if the report missed something?
The surveyor owes buyers a duty of care, so genuine negligence - a missed defect a competent inspection should have caught - is actionable, backed by the firm's professional indemnity insurance. Wear-and-tear surprises and items flagged 'further investigation' that nobody investigated are not negligence.
Can the seller hide a bad first report and buy a better one?
Surveyors won't inflate ratings to order - their liability to buyers doesn't disappear because a seller paid twice. And a materially different second report on the same house invites exactly the scrutiny a seller least wants.
Does the buyer's lender always accept the Home Report valuation?
Most Scottish lending works off a transcription of the Single Survey, provided the firm is on the lender's accepted list. Some lenders spot-check or revalue - at their instigation, usually their cost, and the buyer's problem to manage rather than the seller's.
Who pays for a refresh if the report goes stale?
Convention says the seller - it's their report and their sale that needs it current. It's a modest update fee, and quibbling over it mid-negotiation is rarely worth the goodwill it burns.
Sources and further reading