How much does a Dilapidation Survey cost?

What is the cost of a Dilapidations Survey?

A Dilapidations Survey can be undertaken at a variety of opportunities to assist with quantifying a tenant’s liability at lease expiry. A Dilapidations Assessment may be undertaken on the behalf of the landlord or tenant during the lease term to assess the anticipated Dilapidations liability in order to assist with lease renewals, planning for a business’s future and the future of a property etc.

Interim and Terminal Schedules of Dilapidations are undertaken either during a lease term or shortly afterwards and provide a formal report that can be issued/served on to the tenant.

What impacts the cost of a Dilapidations Survey?

The cost of a dilapidations survey, whether a dilapidations assessment, interim schedule of dilapidations or terminal schedule of dilapidations will mainly be based upon the type of building, it’s size and also the relevant lease obligations.

The type of building can vary the cost of a dilapidations survey as can impact the complexity of the survey. For an example, industrial units are typically relatively open plan and simple in terms of the variety of construction, whereas an retail or office building can be complex in terms of layout and contain differing construction types and materials that will take a commercial building surveyor longer to assess.

The size of a building will impact the cost of a schedule of dilapidations for obvious reasons. Generally, the larger the building the longer the commercial building surveyor will take to assess the building, and also it will take longer to draft the report.

Finally, the tenant’s lease obligations will influence the cost of a schedule of dilapidations. Some leases are not overly onerous and therefore a commercial building surveyor may only be assessing the internal area of a building and looking at specific aspects of the building. Alternatively, some leases are onerous and include every aspect of a building.

Other costs?

In addition, to the commercial building surveyors fee for completing a Schedule of Dilapidations there are other costs that may be incurred.

Some surveys will require access equipment or drones to survey high level areas and therefore a commercial building surveyor will likely advise on budget costs for these at the time of drafting their fee proposal.

Following issue of a Schedule of Dilapidations there may be a number of avenues to take the process forward. A Dilapidations matter is sometimes resolved through a cash settlement and as such costs will likely be incurred in relation to the commercial building surveyor fees for negotiating this settlement.

As part of this negotiation or separate to this, some or all of the dilapidation works may be undertaken (this could be by the tenant during the lease or after lease expiry by the landlord). If works are undertaken, then costs will likely be incurred in relation to the design and project management of these works.

 What are the costs?

As mentioned above the costs of undertaking a schedule of dilapidations will vary depending on the size and type of the building, and the relevant lease terms. As a rough indication the cost of a schedule of dilapidations will likely be between £900-£5,000, although can be higher for very large buildings.

It is worth anticipating circa £400-£500 for access equipment if this is required.

Negotiation fees will vary on the size and compliance of the schedule of dilapidations, although a rough indication will be circa £2,000.

Project management costs again will be dependent on the size of the claim, although likely to be in the order of 10% of the construction costs.

Our Commercial Building Surveyors at Bower Surveyors Limited provide dilapidation surveys in the following locations: Dilapidation Survey Bristol, Dilapidation Survey Exeter, Dilapidation Survey Plymouth, Dilapidation Survey Swindon and Dilapidation Survey Bath.