Commercial/residential surveyor
A commercial/residential surveyor deals with all aspects of residential and commercial property in both the private and public sectors.
Principal activities are related to valuing, managing and marketing property, and acting as an agent for clients who are purchasing, leasing or selling a property.
After initially working in acquisition, disposal, management and valuation of land and buildings, commercial/residential surveyors may specialise in development, investments, rating, planning or consultancy. Consultants may work in private practice, for a business with substantial property holdings, or within a local authority or other public sector organisation, or they may opt for self-employment.
Commercial/residential surveyors generally specialise in either commercial or residential property, but the activities involved are mostly similar.
Typical activities include:
Most surveyors have a Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) accredited degree in a relevant subject area such as:
If your degree is not in a relevant subject, you may be able to take a postgraduate conversion course. The RICS Courses website has a list of accredited course for further information. The College of Estate Management runs a distance learning Graduate Development Programme. This is for graduates of any discipline who also have relevant employment in the property or construction industries.
This profession is not open directly to Diplomates, although it may be possible for a Diplomate to get a job as a trainee surveyor or surveying technician and then progress by taking further qualifications in order to fully qualify.
Pre-entry experience is desirable. Relevant work experience in the property business is highly regarded and will be invaluable if your degree is not directly relevant. Such experience might include clerical or sales work with an estate agency or labouring on a building site to learn how buildings are constructed.
Recruiters will look for:
The job market varies with the state of the economy and entry is competitive. Many large private practices have an annual intake of graduates and may have closing dates as early as December or January of your final year. Others will accept speculative applications slightly later. Contact smaller employers on a speculative basis from around Easter. Public sector organisations rarely accept speculative applications and usually advertise vacancies as they occur.
Many of the jobs in surveying require physical mobility to survey a site, a building under construction or an inaccessible part of a residential property. A driving licence is essential, unless you are working in a defined urban area, such as a city local authority.
For more information, see work experience and internships and search courses and research.
Commercial/residential surveyors aim for chartered status by completing the Assessment of Professional Competence (APC) offered by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) . In order to do this, a minimum of two years work experience must be evidenced. An industrial training year that has been completed as part of an accredited degree, can count towards this period.
Graduates with non-accredited degrees may take a postgraduate conversion course before taking up employment and then undertake the APC training programme in the same way as graduates with accredited degrees.
The APC provides the practical training and experience to go alongside academic qualifications. It involves a final assessment interview, and once passed, the APC allows surveyors to use the letters MRICS after their name.
In order to maintain current professional knowledge and stay up to date with new developments, RICS members are required to undertake continuing professional development (CPD) every year and online study programmes are available. At more senior levels, there is a growing need for surveyors to understand business and management skills.
Following professional training, surveyors can move around to different employers, but there tends to be little movement between the public and private sectors, as these two branches of the profession diverge. Within the public sector, surveyors frequently move between local authorities, universities, hospital trusts or government posts to gain broader experience and a more senior position.
If surveyors have completed their training in private practice, they tend to stay within the private sector, possibly moving to different sizes of private practice to gain broader experience of the different markets, or taking the opportunity to specialise in either commercial or residential work. Once a surveyor makes the choice between the commercial and residential property markets, movement to the other sector is unlikely. While surveyors are required throughout the UK for the residential property market, commercial property surveying practices tend to be based in major cities, the majority being in London and the South East.
Within the private sector, surveyors may join large organisations that either own considerable numbers of premises or have dealings in property development.
In large private sector firms, recognition may come in the form of being offered an associate partnership or salaried partnership. A few high performers will be invited to put money into the firm and become equity partners, sharing directly in the profits.
Qualified surveyors can specialise in land, property or plant and machinery auctioning, or valuing and auctioning of fine arts and antiques.
It is quite feasible, after you have gained experience, to set up in business on your own account, and manage this either as a sole trader working from home or in partnership with other surveyors.
In the public sector, commercial/residential surveyors are employed by local authorities, regional development agencies, universities and hospital trusts, and several central government departments. The Valuation Office Agency (VOA) determines business rates and council tax bands and recruits several trainee surveyors each year. In the voluntary sector, surveyors are employed by housing associations.
Private practice is split between commercial and residential property.
Employers in the commercial property sector include: large private surveying practices; house building companies; property developers; financial, pension fund and insurance institutions; and large corporate organisations, such as retailing chains, banks, railways and other utilities that own large amounts of land.
The residential property market tends to be focused on smaller employers all around the UK. The large national chains of estate agents or major regional firms employ surveyors. Smaller firms are more likely to refer clients to an independent surveyor.
Speculative approaches are definitely worth trying. The RICS Directory and RICS Find a Surveyor are useful for contact details.
Specialist recruitment agencies include Macdonald and Company , which is endorsed by RICS. Information on other recruitment agencies is available from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) where you can search by town and the type of work handled.
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