List of suggested repairs in Building Survey

dl8860

dl8860

dl8860

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So we're in the process of buying a house, it's a 1890s 2 bed semi.

Just got the building survey back over the weekend, and the surveyor has recommended a fairly long list of repairs ranging from damp proofing to re-felting part of the roof, to sorting out a dodgy propping up of the chimney in the loft where it's been removed on lower floors.

The total for all the works is £16k, with around 3-5k of these being fairly urgent to stop matters getting worse, and really, should have been sorted by the current owner.

I'm thinking of sharing the survey with them (via estate agent) and basically saying, can you drop the asking price by half of this, to pitch in.

In every other sense the seller has been very good, there's been no onward chain, they accepted our offer of £10k below asking immediately with no negotiation, and the fixtures and fittings schedule has generously left some useful things (cooker, white goods, wood burner) behind.

It's not asking too much to ask for a reduction in price for about £8k is it? Seeing as these are works that should have been done before, and the agreed price was always subject to the results of the survey.

Any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks.
 
Sounds to me they dropped knowing there were issues,

See what they say and good luck.

I have known friends to offer - the total remedial costs and have it accepted.
 
Datamonkey said:
Sounds to me they dropped knowing there were issues,

See what they say and good luck.

I have known friends to offer - the total remedial costs and have it accepted.
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Yeah i'd suspect this might be the case too.

@OP was the asking price a little over what you thought, or were you trying a cheeky low-ball offer?

Ultimately if they so no, the next buyer is just going to find the same issues when they have a survey carried out, and the vendors will be faced again with a negotiation of lowering the price to compensate for the repairs.
 
Semple said:
Yeah i'd suspect this might be the case too.

@OP was the asking price a little over what you thought, or were you trying a cheeky low-ball offer?

Ultimately if they so no, the next buyer is just going to find the same issues when they have a survey carried out, and the vendors will be faced again with a negotiation of lowering the price to compensate for the repairs.
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Well we're no market experts, I'll just say that our offer was what we were willing to pay for it on sight. It wasn't especially a cheeky low-ball, even if it did work out well getting 10k off the price.

I am sort of expecting a push-back saying 'I've given you a 10k discount already', but the counter to that is, no you haven't, accepting an offer below asking price isn't a discount at all.

Let's see what they come back with.
 
Yes I would re negotiate the price.

No I wouldn't give them the report, just summarise the points and evidence later if required.

I did the same with my house and had the usual off the estate agent "you knew it was in a state of disrepair thus a reduced price"... Stand firm on your side imo.
 
What I just did with mine is get my surveyor to email me a summary of required works (urgent and not so) with an estimated cost for each one. I forwarded this to the agents together with my revised offer rather than the full report.

Made life easier for everyone and I got an agreed re-negotiation straight away at about 75% of the cost of the "urgent" works.

The fact that they've then gone and withdrawn from the sale and put it back on the market at an even higher price is a different story :o
 
Skillmister said:
The fact that they've then gone and withdrawn from the sale and put it back on the market at an even higher price is a different story :o
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Some people live in dreamland!

People like that amaze me, they've clearly got no interest in selling their house if they've got that attitude, so why bother wasting everyone else's time.
 
Has the property been down valued? If not then they must be selling it at a slightly lower price anyway, so essentially you are getting money off already.
If the place is going for market value around there and they expect you to pay that, then tell them to stick it and offer 16k less.

I am in a similar situation but not to that extent. We thought it was a fair price and offered the asking. The surveyor downvalued it 5k and we changed our offer accordingly. They accepted the new price, thankfully.
 
I guess it also depends on how much the purchase price is. 8k on a 100k property is a lot, 8k on a 400k property is comparably much less.

How much is your standing offer?
 
Syla5 said:
I guess it also depends on how much the purchase price is. 8k on a 100k property is a lot, 8k on a 400k property is comparably much less.

How much is your standing offer?
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I was also going to add, not too sure on this but. If the repairs needed are a big percentage in relation to the house cost can't the mortgage provider say no way? (OP might be buying outright but just for general knowing)
 
Vanquish-Storm said:
I was also going to add, not too sure on this but. If the repairs needed are a big percentage in relation to the house cost can't the mortgage provider say no way? (OP might be buying outright but just for general knowing)
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Yes but it would have to be quite substantial and it also needs to be picked up by their valuation report not just your 3rd party survey.
 
The Lender's Valuation didn't pick anything up and their estimate for the value was the same as the purchase price at the time.

The works aren't what you'd call substantial in terms of affecting the value of the property, which this reflects, but it's just a chunk of cost which was unforeseeable and so not accounted for in the purchase price at the time.
 
dl8860 said:
The Lender's Valuation didn't pick anything up and their estimate for the value was the same as the purchase price at the time.

The works aren't what you'd call substantial in terms of affecting the value of the property, which this reflects, but it's just a chunk of cost which was unforeseeable and so not accounted for in the purchase price at the time.
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It will always be valued at the purchase price, they won't shoot themselves in the foot and over value it.
 
dl8860 said:
So we're in the process of buying a house, it's a 1890s 2 bed semi.

Just got the building survey back over the weekend, and the surveyor has recommended a fairly long list of repairs ranging from damp proofing to re-felting part of the roof, to sorting out a dodgy propping up of the chimney in the loft where it's been removed on lower floors.
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I don't know the age of the sellers or how long they have lived there, it would be of interest to know though. Damp proofing in an 1890's house should have been done years and years ago, even more so if the house has been sold many times over since the 1970's. Every single buyers survey would have flagged that up and every building society would have insisted on it being done before agreeing a mortgage, so why wasn't it done ?
Removing a chimney from the ground floor upwards but leaving the loft upwards intact is one of the biggest building alteration cardinal sins there is. I wouldn't touch that house with a bargepole until both those items were dealt with and paid for by the current owner.
 
dl8860 said:
In every other sense the seller has been very good, there's been no onward chain, they accepted our offer of £10k below asking immediately with no negotiation, and the fixtures and fittings schedule has generously left some useful things (cooker, white goods, wood burner) behind.
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Going to add that I thought my seller was like this. Did they sort the garden out as agreed, fix the broken wardrobe door, leave me the tumble drier...nope. Not saying these will be the same, but from what I remember you need to take them to court for the goods, not worth it financially. They might have done this out of spite because the roof needed replacing which we split at £1500 each.
 
Seller is being pretty crabby about it and is saying she'll knock a maximum of £5k off the asking price (not the 8 I asked for), and keeps saying she's already given us 10k off as the original agreed price was 10k under the asking price.

I've reasserted that that 10k was not a discount of any kind, but she's being prickly. I'm considered saying the least we could do is 8k off asking price, or 5k in cash coming our way upon completion. Does that sound sensible?
 
dl8860 said:
I've reasserted that that 10k was not a discount of any kind, but she's being prickly. I'm considered saying the least we could do is 8k off asking price, or 5k in cash coming our way upon completion. Does that sound sensible?
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a) Don't do this;
b) Your lender won't agree to this.
 
Yeah just spoke with the agent and they said it's not feasible from the sellers point of view anyway. I didn't really want to do it anyway as it seemed a pretty complicated option in terms of Lender etc. as you say.

Just need to say if I want to hold firm at 8 or cave to 5. Mortgage calculator says the difference in monthly payments is £12 more per month, so I'm close to just accepting as it's basically trivial over the term of the mortgage, but the principle of it means I'm torn.

I know we have the leverage in terms of who needs this sale to close, but at the same time I do want to get it done ASAP.

Just need to make a decision!
 
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