Buying a house in Manchester? The electrical checks worth doing before you exchange

What a surveyor actually checks

A RICS Level 2 or 3 survey is a visual inspection. The surveyor will look at the consumer unit, note its age and type and write something like "the electrical installation appears dated and should be tested by a qualified electrician." They do not test anything, because testing is outside the scope of a survey. That sentence appears in a large proportion of Manchester survey reports on pre-1990 houses.

It is a prompt, not an answer. The answer is an EICR.

Red flags you can spot on a viewing

You do not need to open anything. Look for:

• –A fuse box with ceramic rewirable fuses or a wooden back board
• –Round-pin sockets, or sockets mounted in skirting boards
• –Fabric or rubber-covered cable visible at the board, in the loft or under the stairs
• –Only one or two sockets per room, or trailing extension leads everywhere
• –Light switches with brass or Bakelite surrounds throughout
• –A newish kitchen or extension with no certificate mentioned in the seller's paperwork
• –Scorch marks or a hot plastic smell at the board

When to get an EICR and what it costs

After your offer is accepted and before exchange. It costs £150 for most houses, takes two to three hours and the seller or agent rarely objects because the alternative is a buyer walking away. You get a report the same day graded Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory with each item coded and explained.

An Unsatisfactory report is not a reason to pull out. It is a costed list. We give you an itemised price for the remedials so you can negotiate with real numbers rather than a surveyor's vague warning.

What typical fixes cost in 2026

The most common outcomes on Manchester purchases, with our prices including VAT:

• –Consumer unit upgrade to an RCBO board: £449 to £649
• –Earthing and bonding to gas and water: £120 to £250
• –Partial rewire, kitchen and bathroom circuits: £1,200 to £2,000
• –Full rewire of a three-bed semi: £3,800 to £5,200
• –Interlinked smoke and heat alarms: from £260
• –Retrospective certification of uncertified work: usually needs an EICR plus remedials, £150 upwards

Paperwork to ask the seller for

Ask for the Electrical Installation Certificate for any rewire or new circuit, the Building Control compliance certificate for notifiable work such as a new consumer unit, a new circuit or work in a bathroom, and any EICR from the last ten years. If the seller has had a rewire, a new board or an extension wired since 2005 and cannot produce a compliance certificate, the work was probably not notified. That is fixable but worth knowing before you agree a price.

Once you own the house, the same rule applies in reverse: keep every certificate with the deeds. It is one of the first things the next buyer's solicitor will ask for.

Questions people also ask