How to negotiate for damp proofing

mazzandra

Hi

We have had an offer accepted on a house. To satisfy the mortgage lender we had two companies assess the damp in the house. They recommended damp proofing costing about £600.

Is it reasonable to expect the sellers to pay for this?

Thanks

princessamy86

You can try! If you don't ask you don't get and all that, it will almost certainly make it easier if you can show them a copy of the report.

scrummy_mummy_2

Were you aware of the damp BEFORE you offered to buy the house at a certain price?

mazzandra

No we weren't, it was only after the mortgage lenders requested a damp report

cattie

Perhaps not to pay for it all, but you can try for a contribution towards it. It's more usual to negotiate for sellers to pay towards work when the work required is more substantial. By a rough rule of thumb, any work needed costing over £1k then I'd try to negotiate a reduction.

Even if vendor's are happy to contribute towards work, don't expect the full amount, you may be lucky, but a common compromise is that the cost of work is divided 50/50 between vendor & purchaser.

scrummy_mummy_2

You can always point out that the work requires doing and see if they will reduce the agreed price by the amount...or a compromise amount.
When I bought my home, we were laerted to a number of issues through the survey and the vendor even offered to reduce the price of the house to accommodate these costs, but we loved the house so much, we didn't want to lose it so stuck at the asking price....it's a trade off between how much you want the house, how reasonable the vendors are (given their financial position!) and whether you think it's a 'del breaker' or not...£600 doesn't sound to me like too much of a damp problem and if you couldn't smell it when you walked in, it's possibly something that could wait a couple of years (??) to be rectified............however, I'd ask the vendor and see what they say, after all, it'll come up in any other survey they have.....if you don't ask, you don't get. £600 in the sale of a property deal is peanuts.

Sandra2

Our buyers report said there was damp, the mortgage company said they would retain money until it was fixed, we had quotes for the work (£600 plus VAT) and said we would pay half which they agreed too. This worked out to be the best solution for us and seems to be the most common having read various postings on here. Good luck!