House Builder Horror

In the increasingly competitive House Builders market which is already suffering from the downturn in the economy, another danger has presented itself. In buoyant times when houses were scarce and it was a ‘sellers market’ nobody took that much notice of Japanese Knotweed (JK). But with a higher profile and recent press articles it would appear that no one wants a house with even a hint of a JK problem.

Current practice has been to try and limit the cost of removal off site, by taking minimal areas of material to licensed tips. Any potential for re-growth has been covered by the use of root barriers and membranes designed to deflect the rhizome of the plant away from buildings and hard surfaces.

This, however is no longer good enough for today’s picky house buyer. It would appear that when given the choice no-one wants anything other than 100% clean/ no risk sites with no root barriers or membranes.

This has resulted in several developments being virtually un-sellable.

However don’t panic…there are options and in this particular instance the house builder ignored all of our advice and went with an option that was very very cheap – and was always going to cause them problems.

And a final piece of advice, please listen to our surveyors – we know what we are talking about.

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