What does a surveyor do?

A surveyor’s role is a mix of the financial, the physical and a great deal of it involves team working for a determined result. The term "surveyor" is a broad term for a range of roles to which no surveying role operates in isolation.

With the constant progression of the RICS and the profession of surveying, we are at a point where today there are so many processes, requirements, legislation and standards that safeguard property as valuable assets.

The RICS is the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

Let me use this article to walk you through what different surveyors do and how this little understood profession operates in the lifecycle of a property.

At the beginning of the cycle we have land and geomatics surveyors who deal with God given earth and a lot to do with legal title, the physical properties of the land. You often find them in their hard hats measuring the landscape and marking out boundaries. The financial and non-physical counterpart to this is the land manager and the rural agent, although they sometimes do not bear the title surveyor, they can become chartered and governed by the RICS, they buy and sell land as an asset, forging relationships with solicitors, planners and bringing together buyers and sellers of land.

Land is the starting point for the built environment but in its natural state it has no inherent value. Land is also governed by the supply and demand of the market which causes the controversial practice of "land banking" where buyers can sit on the asset with the intention of selling for a profit no effort added. A much more interesting approach to increasing land's value is building on it. This is the remit of the property developers, they propose a development project which will get a use out of the land, this can be residential or commercial property. Developers also often lack the surveyor title but similarly can become chartered to add to the confusion. The developer uses elements of finance such as a development appraisal (end sales price - costs of development = how much we can pay for the land and still turn a profit) which forms part of the feasibility studies to measure how productive a bit of land can be. This phase is unfortunately the battleground for the hotly debated "viability" argument where a lot of developers try to reduce the amount of affordable housing, they have to deliver1.

It is very crucial to state that at this point the developer is taking the most risk in the process, they can easily spend 100s of thousands of pounds with nothing yet materialised. The money is easily spent working with surveyors such as land managers to purchase land to develop on, property financiers2 to secure loans for the costs of development, and non-surveyors such as planners and architects.

The other group of people the developer work with on the construction side are the quantity surveyor who ensures the costs of development don’t spiral out of control. The development process for all of this is managed by a project management surveyor who uses his project management skills such as Prince2 or APM to plan and direct everything to satisfaction of the stakeholders including the developer who has a lot riding on the project.

If this is a residential development, the first surveyor we encounter once the building is finished is the residential surveyor. They carry out a survey on your property on behalf of the bank and following the RICS guidance, arrive at the market value of the new home. By doing this, the residential surveyor creates value for the everyone (bank, developer3 and homebuyer). The other person we encounter in a residential setting is the estate sales or letting agent who can value the properties by using their local knowledge. They are able to sell or rent you the property, but they are not governed by the RICS standard in valuation and do not acquire any chartered titles.

The commercial property equivalent of the residential surveyor is the RICS registered valuation surveyor who is also a market expert in commercial buildings that determines what the shiny newly developed spaces can fetch the developer in the market, he like the residential surveyor is bound by the RICS code of conduct and a follows lots of guidance to provide a fair and honest assessment of the value of the space.

The next flashy participants are the engine behind the market. Welcome the agents, scattered into investment, retail, industrial, office and rural. They act for buyers and sellers and landlord and tenants who are usually both businesses. They also do not tend to carry the title surveyor (confusing… I know) but can become chartered and are in fact surveyors. These agents are also too bound by a strict set of RICS standards, ethics and mandatory practice which are also underpinned by legislation to ensure best practices are upheld.

Whenever you see a to let sign on the high street, you know a retail agent is not too far away. In this article there is recurrent talk about the regulation and guidance of the RICS, this is very important to ensure that the industry is as professional as possible, a professionalism which come from the conduct of the person and the product of their work within that space and not from a fancy suit and tie as you can sometimes find. These rules and regulations enshrine that.

When one agent or the other has been paid *very well* and the property has been transacted away from the developer by sale or lease, from then on we see a barrage of jobs come into existence which make up the whole ecosystem that caters to the lifecycle of the property. These jobs including:

• Property management surveyor - oversees day to day operation of property,
• Building surveyor - physical and structural matters,
• Party wall surveyor - a person that acts interest of a wall that separates two property owners,
• Ratings surveyor - aimed at challenging the valuation office to save businesses money on their business rates,
•  Tax surveyor - Better them than me.
• Asset management surveyor - deal with the asset value of a portfolio of properties, by increasing its worth to the owner over time.
• Rent review surveyors - primarily instructed experts in initiating and negotiating rent reviews to justify an increase (when working for the landlord) or challenging it (tenant).
• Rights of Light surveyor - Protecting our God given right to enjoy an adequate level of beautiful sunlight.

This is just a tiny few of a whole host of jobs, many of them very well paid.

The moral of the story is next time you see the estate agent walking down the street in their sharp suit jumping into their convertible mini or you see the a surveyor on the street with a reflective vest and a laser measurer hard at work, understand that this is just the tip of the iceberg to a huge property industry that creates every building and place for our everyday living, working and shopping.

When you dig a little deeper into it you see an opportunity to learn more and more about your built environment. Get involved and I can assure you there is a lot to learn to a point where you can be one of these people that influences the environments around them. Then you have the capacity to contribute and shape what happens with your local community, from simple decisions as to whether a local family run shop will be replaced by a multinational chain to whether a new development will come with the adequate amount of affordable housing that will serve the community for years to come.

There is a wealth of experience to be gained in the property industry.

1Affordable housing use up the same space but sells for less.

3 Can be chartered surveyors but most often CFA holders

3Lets hope the developers financial predictions in the development appraisal was right!

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