About Us

Sodbury Home Surveys is run by Matthew Gardiner — a Chartered Building Surveyor with nearly two decades of experience poking around other people’s houses.

He began life on the drawing board (literally), before realising he preferred crawling through lofts and side-eyeing suspicious cracks to sketching cornices in CAD. Since then, he's surveyed everything from glorious crumbling cottages to wildly optimistic DIY conversions that really shouldn't be standing, earning full RICS chartered status in 2017 along the way. 

After years working in big consultancies (read: conveyor belt surveying), Matthew set up Sodbury Home Surveys in 2020 with a simple mission: stop the nonsense. No jargon. No tick-box reports. Just clear, honest advice that actually helps people. 

These days, he’s focused on delivering surveys that balance real technical insight with plain-English explanations — and that don’t leave buyers more confused than when they started. 

When not exploring exploring under drain covers or running from hidden wasp nests in lofts, Matthew is a keen writer and co-runs a lovely independent bookshop in Chipping Sodbury with his wife. He also enjoys writing, has an odd taste in music, and can often be found being dragged through the Gloucestershire countryside by his springer spaniel, Hubble (who thinks every squirrel is a government conspiracy). 

So if you like straight-talking advice without the backside-covering waffle, and want a surveyor who won’t try to upsell you a damp-proof course you don’t need, Matthew’s your man!