to renovate or walk away?

blueberry_pie_2

had bad news from surveyor today, the house we've offered on he feels needs the downstairs floors lifting and replacing. He can't tell us why it's damp... there is a small amount of standing water by the skirting boards on the original quarry tiled floor which I was concerned about and hoped he could shed light on, but he is baffled. (this is along the interior walls btw, not the exterior nor shared party walls - and the walls themselves are not damp in these areas - There is no central heating to the property, so no heating pipes have been damaged).

he also said it wasn't mortgageable, which is a disaster for us.

I suppose if we can't determine the cause of the damp/water source then we cannot cost the project nor determine the timescales. (If we could do those things and were convincing enough, AND could renegotiate on purchase price, we might be able to swing a mortgage) *frustrated sigh*

without seeing it/digging up the floors, I know there is limited advice anyone can give - however, if anyone has been in a similar situation and could let me know how they dealt with it, that would be great.

I know we will most likely have to walk away, but all other properties in our price-range in York require major works of some-kind... unless we buy in an area where we will be burgled by drug addicts on a fortnightly basis (only a slight exaggeration, seriously...)

thanx,
blue
xxx

Ulfar

Don't walk, RUN.

patch3228

Don't feel down and blue, I think in this case you can't have a slice of the pie and eat it.

Best think that everything happens for a reason and move on ... or as the poster above says RUN.

Best of luck

Doozergirl

If it's genuinely unmortgageable then you won't wangle a mortgage until it's been made mortgageable.

We bought a house - it took a year to get the balance on our mortgage up from 0.00. We shouldered the whole lot and the balance finally arrived in our bank account the day before our wedding. Believe me, there were a few bills that would have gone unpaid that day :eek:

Ours was listed and took forever to get the consents but you will have to buy it cash if it's a genuine problem. It sounds like it's not right - these thing happen for a reason.

themanbearpig

Seriously shocking that you would even consider renovating a house with such massive structural issues. It will be a money pit. Take the other peoples advice; run away and dont look back.

Doozergirl

themanbearpig wrote: »

Seriously shocking that you would even consider renovating a house with such massive structural issues. It will be a money pit. Take the other peoples advice; run away and don't look back.

??? Some has to do it. I don't know why you'd be seriously shocked that someone wanted to fix a house. Money pit maybe but you have to account for that if you wanted to continue.

A house can be unmortgageable without 'massive structural issues' that you're talking about.

blueberry_pie_2

Thanks Doozergirl, it is a gorgeous house - albeit most likely a money-pit.
It was built about 1908 and is virtually untouched, there are SO many fantastic original features to salvage and we could make it beautiful again given a bit of a chance - provided the under-floor issues didn't cripple us...

How did you manage to shoulder all of your costs? There is no chance of us doing a cash-buy, even if we can get the vendor down (he is currently insisting £100k is fair price where the street average resale is £141k, however we will now NOT buy for that - he hasn't surveyed and doesn't yet know the results of our survey (EA is out of office today)).

Uphhh. I wonder how anyone can afford a house?! all properties in decent areas here & within £10k of our price-range (i'm assuming most are overpriced on the assumption they will need to negotiate and they don't want to start too low) all need structural work... are the vendors blinkered? Or are we simply naive in expecting to pay a lower price for, in effect, damaged goods? I dunno anymore.

Doozergirl

We did it with every last penny, some inheritance, our wedding fund, credit cards and a very generous family!

The only comfort for you is that if he won't budge on price for you, he's still unlikely to get it from anyone else either. But if you can't buy it for cash, you're stumped

Here's a very small 'after' shot of ours. It's not been ours for a while now. I'm going to see if I can find a 'before' too.


Here's a link to 'before' - for some reason photbucket won't upload it for me to stick it here.http://www.photobox.co.uk/my/photo?album_id=106874231&photo_id=2044356398