buyer says tiles off roof, for felting???

gentlepurr

hi all

hope someone can help me! sold house, now buyers surveyor says that because house has no felting between roof tiles and rafters (never done in 1901 when house was built!) all the tiles will have to come off the whole roof, felting put on, and the same tiles to go back on. the surveyors builder (of the "you scratch my back & i'll scratch yours variety) has quoted buyer £16,000!!!!!!! got my own roofing contractor in (member of nat fed of roofing contractors) and he has quoted £6,000. have gone back to buyer with this quote, & am now waiting for his reply. but two things:

1) is this necessary? the roof is otherwise in good repair

2) would i/buyer be able to get a grant towards the cost of it?

i live in east staffs.

any thoughts appreciated, thank you

xx

BobProperty

There's got to be more to this than the roof needing felting. I am guessing that the roof is suffering from "nail fatigue" and needs stripping and re-slating. If this is done it would be normal to felt the roof at the same time. It is probably a requirement of Building Regs anyway. I take it that this is a reasonable sized property, even £6k gets you a lot of roofing.

gentlepurr

just what you would class as a traditional three bed detached size roof

and i have seen the buyers quote, all it is for is felting, with the possibility of some new laths required

xx

clutton_2

If the surveyor has found no damp in the roof, i would offer a good will gesture of a £5k reduction, as long as they complete in a month ! if not, keep it on the market for another buyer. You are being manipulated by a surveyor who is dotting his i's and crossing his t's far too pedantically. Thousands of houses have not got felting - unless there is a damp issue, leave well alone is my view !

lilybugs

I'd find out why they need the work doing. If they can prove to you that it needs doing as it was mentioned on a survey, then fair enough but this kind of work won't be necessary if there is nothing currently wrong with the roof.

Our survey came back with some roof issues that would need fixing in the next five years and apparently will cost about £5k to have the back half of the roof redone. (3 bed end of terrace). £16k seems ridiculously steep.

snowstorm

We don't have any felt on our roof either. We did have a builder round for another matter and he commented that he didn't see many roofs like that anymore.

He also said the slate would be worth a bit (I get the impression you might be talking several hundred, maybe a thousand, to be honest I'm guessing, he didn't discuss figures). Apparently you might be able to get this knocked off the price of a new roof if you can sell them to whoever does it. I'd guess the £16k doesn't take account of this.

Why not get a couple of quotes yourself, you've got a bit of bargaining power then.

alice's_mum

why do they want it redoing. Is there a problem. Our roof and 95% of the rooves in our area are done in this fashion and never has it come up that they need re-doing unless there is some problem with them. our house was built 1924. Our loft is bone dry and the tiles are all in good order as are most of my neighbours. I would be tempted to ask exactly why they think they need doing and if they just "want " it then they can pay for it - Its not necessary.