Results of Homebuyers and renegotiation...

tazgirl

Hi all, sorry this is a bit long... v stressed with Easter coming up and need to have a few things straight in my mind so can relax a bit and enjoy my days off!

We're in the process of buying a lovely little victorian terraced cottage, and we've just had our homebuyers report back.... there are quite a few things marked as urgent, as we suspected there might be (it's an old property - built sometime between 1850-80). When we put our offer in the vendor said that there might be some work on the roof that would be highlighted by our survey and if there was, he'd be prepared to drop the price from the agreed £205k down to £200k.

The survey has come back a highlighted a few things:
- urgently need to improve supports in the roof
- urgently need to improve support for both the open fireplace in the living room, and the ex-fireplace in the kitchen which has been corbelled (raked back) without proper support
- need to improve ventilation under living room floor and check for wood-boring insects as is evidence of old infestation in doors

There's a load of other stuff as well, but nothing that we couldn't have told from looking round - repair to windowframes, uneven floors etc, and mainly stuff we can deal with ourselves as we're up for a 'project'. We've also been told that we have to replace access covers to the drains, and that he thought some of the drains were blocked (he must be a right cheery bundle of love to live with...).

We're going to get quotes from a couple of builders recommended by family/friends for the urgent roof supporting/fireplace support work, and then try to renegotiate price.

How serious do people think these things sound? I know surveys are always pessimistic, are we right to address the 'urgent' things and put to one side the 'important' and 'recommended' things?

Also, and probably most importantly, we've put in an application for a mortgage based on 90% LTV (and paid to reserve the deal). If we renegotiate the price down from £205k to £200k or lower (depending on the quotes/seriousness of work), this will take us up to nearer 95% LTV, so into a different interest rate bracket - will we have to reapply/pay again - how does this work with mortgage companies?

(BTW, we suspect that the vendors had an earlier offer and the first buyers pulled out when they got the survey done, as the house suddenly came back on the market and the 'fixtures and fittings' etc paperwork we got via our solicitor was dated a few weeks before we saw it come on the market... EA won't confirm this either way)

dander

Well if the vendor was already offering to renegotiate the price based on the survey before the survey even came in I would say he's definitely lost previous buyers over all this.

I would say anything saying that urgent structural repairs are needed really needs to be dealt with immediately. It's effectively saying that the house isn't entirely safe at the moment. However fireplace support seems to be something that comes up fairly regularly on surveys so I'm sure there's a simple tried and tested way of dealing with it. And extra support in a roof is not as far as I know particularly hard to deal with.

I think you definitely need to get some quotes in for how much it will cost and start talking reduced prices with the vendor. My feeling is if he's already lost one vendor and is now in danger of losing you he may be pretty amenable to reduction.

tazgirl

Thanks for your quick reply! That's pretty much what I think - it needs to be done ASAP, but it's not as bad as we suspected - 'something with the roof' led us to think about whole roof coming off etc. We're actually quite up for getting some work done, as the property is near the bottom end of our budget, so we'll have some spare cash - and we can see that properties like this in the area that are in really good nick are going for a good ten-fifteen grand more, so it should be a sound investment.

However, you're right - I suspect the vendor is busy biting his nails to the quick, knowing we've had the survey done. I'm kind though, so I won't let him sweat too long!