Selling a house with rot problems

Quick Navigation

The guide below offers helpful information for all homeowners on what dry rot is and what can cause it, as well as tips both on treating dry rot before attempting to find a buyer for your home or not resolving the issue before proceeding to sell your house or flat.

1. An explanation of dry rot
2. The causes and potential signs of dry rot in a property
3. How does dry rot differ from wet rot?
4. Why the presence of dry rot can be a hindrance to selling your home
5. Treating and preventing dry rot before selling your home
6. Selling your home without treating a dry rot problem
7. Questions and answers about selling a property with dry rot

An explanation of dry rot

Although there are many useful reference guides online that explain in detail what dry rot is and how to spot it, we understand that homeowners looking to quickly sell their home might not be able to spend an extensive amount of time searching for this information to determine whether or not they have the presence of dry rot at their property.

Instead, you can use this guide (amongst others) for a straightforward summary of the most important facts to know about dry rot before you decide whether to treat it ahead of selling your home. If you are selling your property with rats, bugs or any form of infestation – make sure you read our complete guide on selling with an infestation.

Also known by the name Serpula lacrymans or alternatively S. lacrymans, dry rot occurs naturally and is a fungus that if left untreated will cause the timber in your home to rot. The fungus thrives on damp wood, using it as a food source to spread. This in turn can cause structural problems that can range from minor to major depending on the scope of the problem.

And unfortunately, dry rot could also spread to other materials in your property including steel, brick, plaster and stone, although it only has the potential to destroy any timber in the home. For some properties, dry rot can mean the structural integrity of the home could be placed at risk.

The causes and potential signs of dry rot in a property

Damp is a leading cause of dry rot in most houses and flats, and the fungus associated with dry rot particularly thrives with temperatures between 22ºC and 26ºC. Damp in turn can occur as a result of different reasons, including rainfall damaging part of a property.

In order for dry rot to grow, the timber in your property will need to have a moisture content of between 28 percent and 30 percent, which is significantly moister than wood in your home should normally be. This moisture enables the fungal spores to grow and spread, and even if you reduce the moisture of your timber, dry rot can still survive at 20 percent moisture once grown and start to spread across brick or stone to affect more of your property.

It’s possible for your home to be infected with dry rot for more than a year before showing any signs. And some dry rot within the walls of your home might never show on the surface. However, a telling sign of dry rot is whether you can see a square series of fine cracks along the wood in your home, and the wood has started to turn a darker colour and start to crumble. With tenanted property, dry rot can go unnoticed for quite some time therefore it is important to perform regular inspections for any issues.

Thankfully for experts and novices alike you can buy relatively affordable detection sticks that you can insert into walls and other timber parts of your home to find out whether you have active dry rot, and you should particularly focus on rooms where you know or suspect there is damp.

Smell can be another indicator of the presence of dry rot, because it produces an odour that is musty and that becomes more prominent as the fungus spreads throughout your home.

How does dry rot differ from wet rot?

There is a difference between dry rot and what’s known as wet rot, with dry rot applying to the fungal infestation of "dry" already felled wood that is used for a specific purpose such as in the construction of a home, and rot in wet wood that has recently been felled.

To help you differentiate between the two types of rot, it’s useful to know some of their typical features. Dry rot has strands that are grey in colour, affects wood that feels hard, and produces a mushroom of fungus that appears to be rust-coloured or orange. Wet rot in contrast appears on wood that is soft to touch, has black or white strands, and a yellow or white mushroom.

Why the presence of dry rot can be a hindrance to selling your home

If you have dry rot at your house or flat, regardless of the scale of the issue, some people might see it as a problem property and lose any interest in making an offer to buy it. That’s because they don’t have the time, money, or desire to possibly have to fix the dry rot after buying your home.

You should disclose the presence of dry rot to anyone that is interested in making on offer to purchase your property because you place yourself at risk of litigation if you sell your house or flat without disclosing this issue and they discover it later after buying the home.

And even if you have paid to treat the dry rot at your property, some buyers might still be wary about making an offer on it because of concern that the issue might recur in the future.

Treating and preventing dry rot before selling your home

If you would like to sell your house or flat but first resolve an issue with dry rot, this is certainly an option you can choose but it will cost you some time and money. However, the upfront investment could be worth it because a home where the dry rot problem has been fixed will likely be considered more attractive to a wider range of people looking to buy a property. Be sure to consult a specialist in dry rot treatment and identification before taking any steps.

Generally, to start the process of treating dry rot you’ll have to find out where the moisture is collecting that is leading to the damp which helps the fungus to grow. Check for leaks, damaged pipes, any blockages in your gutters, and other potential sources of the increased moisture.

The next step can involve a number of different treatment options, including cutting our and replacing all of the affected wood. Depending on your skill level with home improvements and repairs, it might be more sensible to pay for a professional who can do this work. You don’t want to risk doing the work alone without any skill and then potentially make it worse.

However, fixing the dry rot problem at your house or flat before listing your home for sale with an estate agent, an auctioneer or another method of selling might not be something that every homeowner can do with the help of a professional. Depending on the scale of the problem, it could require an extensive amount of work and cash to fully resolve the dry rot, and it’s possible that you won’t have the funds or time to achieve this.

Selling your home without treating a dry rot problem

If you do not have the time or money necessary to treat an existing dry rot problem at your house or flat before selling it, the good news is that the presence of the issue will not necessarily completely prevent you from being able to find a buyer for your home, even if you are selling an uninhabitable property.

However, you will have to understand that some people might be immediately turned off from the idea of buying your property once they find out about the dry rot, because they will know that it will be a problem that they will have to spend money to fix if they buy your property. Be prepared for someone to either walk away immediately from buying your home or offer a lower price to buy it than the price at which you have listed it. In the latter example their reduced offer accounts for the cash they’ll have the invest on fixing the dry rot flaw.

Should you want to proceed with trying to sell your home with dry rot, your next step is to decide between using an estate agent, using a property auction, or using a speedy cash home buyer.

Using an estate agent

One option for selling a home with dry rot is to contact an estate agent, because they will do the hard work of creating a listing for the property as well as advertising it in order to get people interested in viewing it. But you might need to spend some time finding a specialist estate agent who has experience selling homes with structural problems such as dry rot.

If you do find an estate agent willing to sell your home, you’ll also need to agree to have viewings at your property for buyers to tour the interior and exterior. Some homeowners find these viewings to be very time-consuming as well as inconvenient.

Another negative aspect of selling this way is that it can take a very long time, perhaps months or more before you get a serious offer from a buyer. That’s not ideal if your primary goal with selling your house or flat is to secure a sale as quickly as possible.

And estate agents also charge commission for selling properties, so you will have to subtract this charge from the net profit that you can expect to make selling your home this way.

Using a property auction

If you are thinking about selling your home at an auction, there are some important pros and cons to know. At an auction, you’ll agree to a minimum reserve price for your home and if anyone bids that price then the property will sell. If your home fails to receive the minimum bid then it won’t sell. Your goal is for lots of people to be interested in buying your home so that they keep trying to outbid each other by bidding greater prices for your home, which increases your final profit.

And auctioneers have experience with selling a broad range of properties, including those that have major issues including dry rot, subsidence, and more. So just because your home has dry rot will not prevent you from attempting to find a buyer for it through an auctioneer.

But there can be a few delays associated with selling your home via an auction. For example, after you list your property for sale you might still possibly have to wait a few weeks or perhaps longer until the auction takes place. And once the auction is over and your home has sold, you could be waiting a month or more until the required legal paperwork can be completed.

Further, auctioneers will charge you commission to cover the cost of marketing and selling your home, and this will in turn reduce the total profit that you’ll make from the auction.

Using a speedy cash home buyer

A third way to sell your property with dry rot is to contact a cash home buyer, such as LDN Properties. They are typically able to make competitive and speedy offers to purchase a huge range of flats and houses for cash, even when they have potentially negative attributes.

For example, LDN Properties has a long list of happy customers who have sold many different types of problem homes including houses that are in need of major repair, flats made from non-standard construction material such as concrete, properties with an infestation of an invasive species known as Japanese knotweed, and homes that have dry rot.

The speed of selling your home to a cash buyer is one of the biggest benefits, because they can generally complete the purchase of a property in a handful of weeks. This includes the time taken to pay homeowners the proceeds and exchange contracts on the property, and this schedule is typically much faster than selling using an auction or an estate agent.

And most legitimate fast cash home buying companies won’t charge you any fees for selling your property, which means you get to retain all of the profit from the sale of your home.

Answering your questions when selling a property with dry rot

Homeowners looking to sell quickly often have a number of questions, ranging from the costs of selling a home through to selling with dry rot. Here are some of the main questions and answers we’ve been asked about selling with rot: