In the UK, The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) is viewed as one of the most prestigious professional bodies within the built environment sector. The post-nominals ‘MRICS’ after a surveyor’s name often means that the surveyor is a Chartered Surveyor.
But do surveyors really need to strive to earn Chartership? Does it have an impact directly on salary and does it increase career prospects? These are Robinson Engineering Surveys the pertinent points of discussions that come up within surveyor circles.
Let us look at a live snapshot, dated at time of writing, 11.03.202, to see what the job market offers for a Chartered Building Surveyor vs a Non-chartered Building Surveyor.
We used CV-Library as our source and London as our location…
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Now this is by no way a definitive side by side salary comparison that represents the entire sector, but we have noticed in the last 5 years or so is the constant demand of technical professionals within the built environment. This demand from employers and end-clients normally means that employers cannot be too ‘fussy’ about what they demand from candidates and this may be one of the factors that could be ‘watering-down’ the requirement for chartered building surveyors.
However, a chartered building surveyor will mostly enjoy many more benefits than a non-chartered surveyor, for example, professional indemnity insurance at a cheaper rate and the ability to win more work and clients via their professional membership.
Recently, there has been a huge surge in Londoners venturing out from the rental market to the 1st time buyer market. This is partly due to the stamp duty holiday that the UK government announced and recently extended. A building surveyor is normally relied upon to undertake a house survey to inform clients of property’s condition, state of repair and any future cost liabilities that the homebuyer may require to spend to bring the property back up to a decent standard. The building surveyor’s report would normally pick up on any structural defects too. After receiving the survey report, a homebuyer may use the report as a negotiating tool to reduce the asking / agreed sale price of the property if many defects and cost liabilities are identified by the surveyor. In this case, where the survey report is being heavily relied upon for commercial discussions, a MRICS Chartered Surveyor may be seen as somebody who has more ‘weight’ behind their report than a non-chartered surveyor.
To conclude, a chartered surveyor will enjoy certain perks over a non-chartered surveyor; however, this should not undermine the genuine desire of the job market for non-chartered surveyors who can sometimes be equally as competent as chartered surveyors but just lack those post-nominals!
