What to expect next?

cheddah

Hiya, I'm really, really excited! My partner and I are well on the way to buying our first home. I just wanted to ask for a little insight about what to expect next though, so your advice would be appreciated.

So, we put an offer in before Christmas and had it accepted whilst we were on holiday. Sorted our mortgage out and have had both the bank's survey and our own homebuyers survey done. The bank have given us the final ok to proceed.

However, both surveys highlighted a number of things that need to be looked at. I get the impression that none of it is urgent or deal breaking (woodworm; render needs doing; damp survey although no damp found; few tiles on roof need fixing). I know that I should get estimates for things like the woodworm first. I guess my first question is, assuming they come back with a quote for some work, how do I go about asking the seller to contribute. The bank has suggested that we may be able to ask for as much as £1000 towards the work that needs doing. Is this normal? Do people go back to the seller to renegotiate after the survey has been done? Would I ask for cash or just reduce my offer? I feel somewhat cheeky to ask to change the terms now, but don't want to be stupid not to try, especially as we won't have much spare cash to fix things as we have had to put most of our savings for furniture into our deposit.

Finally, assuming the business detailed above is smooth to resolve, how long can I expect before completion? There are only 2 more houses in the chain and so far there are no problems with them. What happens next? What must I do before completion (I know I have to arrange my insurance, but anything else)?

Sorry that this post is far from brief. I'm a little over-excited!:j

Many thanks in advance,

Catherine

puddy

yes, of course thats what the survey is for, if the survey found that the whole roof needed to be replaced say, that would cost about 20k, would you still go ahead at the same price?? i doubt it

so the work for the woodworm would say to you that you are looking at getting this treated, that costs money, i suppose its up to you if you want to pay it yourself but i would be saying to the vendor, ive got to drop 2k, the woodworm needs treating

SavingSteve

Agree with Jenner, any work needing doing (which wasn't obvious) should be the seller's responsibility.

However if the work was obvious, i.e. you would have clearly seen it and should have been expected to base your offer on the condition, then it's not reasonable to reduce the price.

Woodworm falls into the latter category, so the seller should sort it.

beaujolais-nouveau

cheddah wrote: »

woodworm ...woodworm ... furniture

Apologies if this is stating the obvious but don't move any wooden furniture into your new house until you have a completion certificate for the woodworm treatment.

poppysarah

Render? How much render? You perhaps need to price up each job.

Wickedkitten

Is it active woodworm? Almost all old houses will have evidence of woodworm but as long as it's not active I wouldn't worry that much about it.

Our old house was early Victorian and when we got our survey back, we had a builder go in and price up the works that needing doing (the major one was the lack of party wall between ours and the house next door) and then print off a copy of our survey, stapled it to the builders quotation and gave that to the estate agent and ended up getting our offer price adjusted accordingly.

kimroddy

Hello,

Hey buddy congratulations for your new venture:beer:, having own house is like dream come true, fill your home with love and affection and for rest of the place use nice furniture and accessories.

Regards,
kimroddy

cheddah

Thanks for your replies and advice!

I'm not sure if it is active woodworm because the survey didn't say. Our solicitor is in the process of trying to establish if there is a guarantee that treatment has been done in the past. Failing this, I know I need to get someone in to look at it as I understand active woodworm can be problematic to say the least. Trouble I have is, having never owned a home, I'm not 100% sure who deals with each thing I want checking.

For example, the survey also spoke about the outside being at a higher level than the inside and needing to get this checked by a damp proof contractor. My googling seems to have concluded that damp proof contractors can also survey woodworm. Is this correct?

The render is small. Just the back of the house is rendered (the front is naked brick) and it has some cracks. Is it a builder to look at this? Any old builder or do builders specialise? Can the builder also check out the state of the roof tiles as apparently some are loose.

Would I normally have to pay for this type of specialist survey prior to purchasing?

This is all a foreign language to me so I am extremely grateful for your help. My other half has kindly left the entire house buying project to me!

Thanks in advance,

Catherine

Sonofa

kimroddy wrote: »

Hello,

Hey buddy congratulations for your new venture:beer:, having own house is like dream come true, fill your home with love and affection and for rest of the place use nice furniture and accessories.

Regards,
kimroddy

You sound very Hippy Happy, but you're still a spammer :spam:

'fill your home with love and affection and for rest of the place (come buy lots of overpriced repo stuff from me as it just so happens there is a hyperlink in my signature) use nice furniture and accessories'

Wickedkitten

cheddah wrote: »

Thanks for your replies and advice!

I'm not sure if it is active woodworm because the survey didn't say. Our solicitor is in the process of trying to establish if there is a guarantee that treatment has been done in the past. Failing this, I know I need to get someone in to look at it as I understand active woodworm can be problematic to say the least. Trouble I have is, having never owned a home, I'm not 100% sure who deals with each thing I want checking.

For example, the survey also spoke about the outside being at a higher level than the inside and needing to get this checked by a damp proof contractor. My googling seems to have concluded that damp proof contractors can also survey woodworm. Is this correct?

The render is small. Just the back of the house is rendered (the front is naked brick) and it has some cracks. Is it a builder to look at this? Any old builder or do builders specialise? Can the builder also check out the state of the roof tiles as apparently some are loose.

Would I normally have to pay for this type of specialist survey prior to purchasing?

This is all a foreign language to me so I am extremely grateful for your help. My other half has kindly left the entire house buying project to me!

Thanks in advance,

Catherine

You would probably be better off in all three cases getting three builders to go visit the house and give you quotes for the render, the damp, and the woodworm. Damp Course Contractors at the end of the day are just salesmen who will poke a damp meter into your walls and then try to sell you a damp proof course for several thousands of pounds.

The easiest way to tell if the woodworm is active or not is because there will be sawdust near the holes. If you are wanting to save some cash you can actually buy the treatment and just treat the wood yourself. Same as the render really, it's dead simple to fix cracks and what a builder would charge you (or hubby) about a hundred to do , you can easily do with a bag of plasterers sand, some cement, water and a squirt of fairy liquid.

Cheers,

Cath