Full Structural Survey & Valuation

Jewel_2

Hello!

OK, now I know for sure. We have sold our old house (STC) and the surveyors are coming next week to do a full structural survey.

Our house is over 150 years old and could do with a makeover, although structurally as far as we know it is sound. However, there are going to be tweaks and minor things wrong (hopefully not major).

With the valuation being carried out, if there are minor defects, does this usually affect the mortgage offer? I have visions of our buyers asking us to reduce the price for "this and that", which we won't do as we cannot afford to come down any more.

Does anyone know what usually happens and whether being an old property this is taken into account when valuing?

yelf

the buyer is getting a full strucural valuation for the rasons you said: if they think they'll need to spend an extra £10K on essential repairs they will ask foir it to be knocked off most probably.

shirlgirl2004

Generally it depends if the things that need doing are obvious. Ther'es no point saying they need money off for a new bathroom if there was no toilet there when they viewed. Generally you'd only expect to drop for nonobvious things but not always. I remember we dropped for some work that was obvious but it wasn't much and if it made the sale go through it was worth it. This is certainly the line we will take when we get the results of our full survey back.

Trying_to_be_good

Firstly, there's not a lot you can do about this, so try not to lose sleep over it. Our survey on the house we're buying (80 years old) came back with loads of stuff, the 'normal' wordworm, wall-tie corrosion, some damp, external rendering, window replacements, replacement plumbing and re-wiring etc. We already knew about the plumbing/heating, re-wiring and windows, but were surprised by the damp etc, so have asked the vendor for further investigations into those.

I'd be more concerned about the mortgage valuation than the survey, as if that comes back at lower than the agreed purchase price it can affect the total amount of the mortgage to be offered by the lender (or that the lender may be advised to hold back funding until work is carried out by iether yourselves or the purchasers).

Our valuation came back a bit lower, but not enough to affect the LTV on the mortgage, and not for the lender to hold on to any of the funds.

Good luck

Jewel_2

Thanks guys. I am more concerned about the LTV stuff I suppose, but anyhow, we cannot afford to go any lower so what will be will be.

I remember buying this house and I don't think we had a full structural survey, so it's probably been 10 years since the last one. These buyers have already had one house surveyed and it fell through - perhaps they should look at new houses instead, which are probably more likely to fall down anyway, lol!

Unfortunately as I see it buyers think that it's a buyers market, which it is in a way, although there are so few houses for sale around here and there's always a minimum the seller can afford to sell for.