Home Report Help

AliKate

Hi I would be grateful for any advice. I had my home report done on 15th october 2009 and have agreed an offer on my house two weeks ago. I have just had a call from my estate agent to say my home report has expired and someone will come out for a reinspection my first question is how much is this? EA couldnt say. And do i definatly need to agree to this i already hated spending £500 on my HR for my small two bed mid-terrace and also the company made mistakes which i never followed up. I am reluctant to have a reinspection i feel it is unnecessary also i am concerned as my EA Countrywide provided my HR but also are providing my buyer with a mortgage i feel there is a conflict of interests as they now are working for us both. I feel let down again considering the amount i will be paying them to work for me. Thanks

RacyRed

As you are calling it a Home Report I'm assuming you are in Scotland? Apologies if I got it wrong.

Is this any help?

Q4 Does the Home Report have a 'shelf-life' which means that I need to obtain a new Home Report after a certain period of time has elapsed?

The legislation does not impose a set shelf life or validity period for any of the Home Report documents. Decisions as to whether any aspects of the Home Report need to be refreshed/updated are for sellers, buyers and their professional advisers to take, depending on the circumstances of each case. The refresh is not an additional survey, but usually a simple re-inspection.

googler

If the buyer or buyer's mortgage lender won't accept an HR older than a certain time, then it's up to you and your solicitor to negotiate on whether or not you pay for the re-inspection, or they do, also whether or not you actually allow the re-inspection. You have a valid HR according to legislation, the buyer or their lender want it to be more valid.....

Depends on how much you want to dig your heels in, how flexible they'll be, and whether or not you're likely to put them off totally by trying to get them to agree to pay for it, etc

AliKate

RacyRed wrote: »

As you are calling it a Home Report I'm assuming you are in Scotland? Apologies if I got it wrong.

Is this any help?

Thanks that is a help and yes i'm in Scotland.

Lynn11

I was advised by my lender that if we find a house we like to buy (after we sell ours) then they can accept the mortgage valuation in the home report if within 3mths otherwise we have to get the original valuer to update the mortgage valuation so that we can use this for mortgage purposes.

Hopefully you can get an update at no cost. Fingers crossed as we have got a home report for our house but who knows when we will find a buyer. It will be interesting to find out if we the seller have to pay another fee for this if required.

G_M

It is not a question of whether it is valid, but of how up to date it is.

Yes, the Home Report is Valid. So you don't have to get a new one.

Being 4 months old, it is not 'bang up to date'. If the buyer wants more up to date info, by all means give him access to get it... at his own cost.

googler

I was advised by my lender that if we find a house we like to buy (after we sell ours) then they can accept the mortgage valuation in the home report if within 3mths otherwise we have to get the original valuer to update the mortgage valuation so that we can use this for mortgage purposes.

...but this may vary from lender to lender.

Hopefully you can get an update at no cost.

Good Luck with that. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Fingers crossed as we have got a home report for our house but who knows when we will find a buyer. It will be interesting to find out if we the seller have to pay another fee for this if required.

If, as a seller, a buyer came to me and said "We need an updated valuation", my response would be "Book your surveyor, pay him and let me know when he's going to call. I've got a Home Report that's valid according to the legislation, it's not my fault that your lender won't accept it. If you or your lender want it refreshed, you arrange it and you pay for it."

If the OP or the OP's solicitor take this approach with the buyer, there's three possible outcomes;

The buyer doesn't proceed with the purchase, and withdraws their offer.

The buyer pays for the refresh, then proceeds or withdraws.

The buyer doesn't get the refresh, and goes ahead anyway (unlikely, if it's the lender that's protesting).

HousehunterScotland

In some ways the home reports are good, others not so good.

We recently found a house we liked but the home report is over a year old. The value is therefore fallen around 9% since the home report was done, but the seller is adamant that their minimum is only 6% under. We'd need an independent valuation as our bank doesn't accept the home report. We don't think we can buy the house for this reason. Also given that it's been on the market for over a year with our offer being the first, I don't think it was going to sell at their valuation. Their valuation is also higher than you would expect of the 2001 to now increase. We know this because ours is sitting at 2x and they think theirs is x2.65. We have significantly upgraded our house, new kitchen bathroom and gch. Property never had proper fitted kitchen and had electric heating. They have only upgraded a porch, and monoblock driveway. Kitchen bathroom and windows all need replaced.

I think if the home report was 'updated' they would realise they were being unrealistic. It's a shame, because their estate agent even says they need to consider the price.

Seems there's a terrible determination not to accept the changes in value when they're downward!

googler

All you need do is find a balance between 6% and 9% that's acceptable to you both. Is your solicitor negotiating this for you? If not, why not?

slbhill

I'm in the same boat as the OP - our buyer (his solicitor rather) won't accept the home report because it's "too old". As others have said, while the legislation doesn't require it to be very recent, a lot of buyers, lenders & solicitors are requiring it to be less than 12 weeks old (farcical given the speed of the market these days). We could start arguing about who pays for the refresh - but it's the first offer in 6 months, and we've found the hosue we want to offer on, so we're just not willing to enter into that kind of delay over a *relatively* small amount of money.

We paid £400 (inc VAT) for the original home report for our 3 bed semi, and now that I've read threads on this forum I realise we could have got it cheaper by not going through our estate agent! Now they want another £100 for the refresh (probably plus VAT) and I suspect going to another HR provider isn't an option as they would be starting from scratch.

What's particularly annoying is that I specifically asked my estate agent right at the start whether the HR would go out of date, and she assured me it wouldn't, that they had *never* had to have one redone. :mad: Of course it's not in writing so I can't prove anything, but I do feel the mother of all complaint letters coming on.

AliKate

Hi I have had my Home report refreshed for £118. The surveyor came in said if anything had been changed it hadnt. He said he was fine with it and left no look around or anything just 2 minutes work. Our lawyer advised considering the small amount of money just pay for the survey and dont risk the sale, so we did.