Selling but asbestos in artex. Advice requried ASAP

alm721

Defo ask for a full copy of the report and then a couple of quotes yourselves. My sister had this with a house she just bought. The survey said absestos in ceiling/artex not sure which and gave an estimate of 10k fo remove it etc. Her mortgage company therefore offered 10k less which caused a huge problem. In the end she got several quotes and managed to get it removed for £500

GDB2222

If you decide to remarket the house and prices drop another X% before you find a buyer, how does this affect you? In principle, the property you purchase is X% cheaper too. So, are you trading up, or down, or sideways price-wise? Also, what does a drop of say 10% or 20% do to your ability to get together a deposit for the new mortgage?

g_fella

GDB2222 wrote: »

If you decide to remarket the house and prices drop another X% before you find a buyer, how does this affect you? In principle, the property you purchase is X% cheaper too. So, are you trading up, or down, or sideways price-wise? Also, what does a drop of say 10% or 20% do to your ability to get together a deposit for the new mortgage?

Trading up. One bed flat on my own to detached house with my GF Not in the same area of course. No way we could afford that type of property around here. The money is a factor, but timescales are another consideration. It's taken a year to get to this point (offer that was just acceptable, finding a property that we could afford and that was actually suitable for us to get on with our lives). All our plans for the future have been put on hold again thanks to this. People must buy properies all the time with the artex/asbestos issue. Just my luck I'm not one of the lucky ones that seems to get the easy pass.

Plan of action for tomorrow is :
- Phone the HSE helpline to ask their advice.
- Speak to my agent to see if he's got his hands on the full report.
- Discuss things with my GF (including looking at our money situation.... again!)
- Cry a little
- Discuss with my agent/solicitor about how I should proceed.

It's late now tho, so gotta go to bed and see if I can dream up the answer.
Feel free to keep the suggestions/messages coming, I'm sure I will check back here on and off all day tomorrow. Cheers all.

GDB2222

As you are trading up, you can afford to be pretty laid-back about house price falls. So, the only thing pushing this along is your wish to get settled in the new place. If this sale falls through because your buyer wants his full £8k off, and if prices fall another 20%, you are going to be a lot better off financially.

Out of interest, when you decided on your sale price, you looked at other comparable sale prices? And would those properties have had asbestos in the artex?

g_fella

Right, I've slept on it, and I'm still none the wiser as to how to resolve this.

I sent a long email to my agent which basically said that no way was i paying £8k for someone to rip the flat apart just to install some halogen lights. If my buyer really wants to put them in then it's really his problem, and I would suggest that he could spot remove the artex in the places where he wants to put the lights (or just follow the guidelines here : http://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/essentials/index.htm A26-A28) which should cost him no more than £500-£1k.

Still going to call the HSE helpline this morning just to see what they say. But that will have to wait until I get to work. Feel awful today as I really didnt sleep very well with this praying on my mind. Will check back here later to see if you guys have anymore words of wisdom.

g_fella

I'm still fuming. Perhaps more so today than yesterday. I've had yet another day at work feeling guilty about the amount of time that I've had to spend on this. So much so, I'm now going to have to spend the evening doing work to make up for it. :mad:

Not only does the report say that my flat needs no work to make it safe, but my Dad pointed out to me that the report has been carried out in line with the following regulations : "Duty to Manage Asbestos in Non Domestic Premises Regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2006". Non domestic ? It's a flat.... for living in ! It's quite clearly a domestic property!

Anyway, another potentially useful web page for anyone that is interested is http://www.asbestoswatchdog.co.uk/ . See this page for instance, it states :

"If you are selling your house, can your property become devalued if TDCs are present?
A common scam if you are selling your house is for a surveyor to suggest you need to remove your TDCs; threatening you with devaluation of your property if you fail to comply.
You are under NO legal obligation to remove TDCs from your ceilings or walls, and anyone threatening to devalue your property under the pretext of the new buyer having to remove the TDCs once they move in is fraud. The prospective buyer of your property will not be under any legal obligation to remove them either".

Aaarrggghhh.. The more I read the more annoyed I get. I've responded to my agent and now also let the agent that we are buying off know that I appear to be having a few problems.

I dont want to think it, but I'm really starting to think that my buyer is just out to get a bargain. A quick call to an artex removal company suggested that they could do the removal for about £40 per sq-m (that is lifting the ceiling off as it is potentially easier than removing the artex from the boards), and then £20 per sq-m for replacing it. That's about £3.5k max for the size of my flat. Certainly nowhere near the £8k he was told. I still think it's not my cost to pay tho, as even that removal company said they wouldnt do that just to put some lights in.

Just have to wait and see what the reply is from my buyer I guess. Maybe I'm getting myself worked up for nothing. More news to follow as I get it.
Wish me luck.

Doozergirl

You really are getting yourself worked up for nothing.

We all know it really only costs the price of skimming over the stuff there's no amount of googling that will change what your buyer says now. It's a shame you haven't had a response.

Chill out though. You can't change anything by stewing and getting angry - in fact you could make things worse if you read into the buyer's motives without genuinely knowing what they are.

g_fella

You are right of course. I shall just sit back and see how things unfold from here. Just a bit annoyed as he hasnt even started the process of getting a proper survey done yet.

Cant wait to see what he does when he finds out the building is subsiding, it's built on a fault line, and when it rains one of the bedroom walls becomes an internal water feature. (I'm joking of course )

Doozergirl

You make me laugh!

Davesnave

Doozergirl wrote: »

You make me laugh!

Me too, but thanks for updating. I'm looking in Wales, which is Artex Heaven
(and Plastic Mahogany Criss-cross Leaded Light Paradise!) so this is very educational.