Buying house with known Corrected Structural movement Issue

seeker901

Dear All,

We have liked a house Built in 1930's and it looks perfectly good inside and outside.The vendors have maintained it well.

We put in an offer and got accepted and we have done a structural survey which identified that structural work was carried out.
Upon inquiry, the vendors informed that was a structural wall tying and Plinth repair work carried out for cracks at the bay window 16 years ago. The work was done under insurance claim.And vendor is having the papers and ready to share it.

Currently there are no cracks visible both externally and internally.

We would like to know the following.

We understand that there is till a risk of recurrence even if the problem has been corrected. In this scenario we feel we are taking on a unwanted risk which is summarized as follows
a)Our insurance premium will increase since i will have to declare the structural movement history even though the problem has been corrected?
b)The problem may recur and a new chapter in the insurance history will open and we may have difficulty in remortgaging and renewing my insurance?
c)The problem may not occur , But I may have to declare the issue when I got to resell the property and will have to give a substantial discount.

In light of the above,

should we walk away from the deal?

or

Is is worth asking for a discount from the vendors looking at the above risks? if so how much.

Any Thoughts would be appreciated....

Thanks in advance

vegasvisitor

We looked at a house that had a slope in the floor and the seller was just about to have it corrected (empty house, and probably they planned to fix it because it was causing problems with selling -had been on the market 2 years I think.

They fixed the floor in the living room, self levelling stuff on the hall floor but not enough (we also knew we would need to lift that floor to instal heating, so not helpful), and they also levelled a bedroom floor upstairs (that they didn't tell us about, but we noticed that the carpet had been up etc).

In the end our surveyor didn't fill us with confidence at all. The house had been built on top of rubble from the railway tunnel around 1900. It was a early 1900s house, so not likely to do anything drastic now, but we just felt it was too worrying - and would be a long term worry too.

The house did sell for under the going rate for a house in that area, although there are several houses affected by the rubble issue on that side of that road. In hindsight when we walk by there we can even see the lean of some of them (they lean just a little in opposite directions in places and it is visible when you look closely).

I think it would devalue the house, but that would also be dependant on the severity. In a good market though, minor structural flaws would be much less of an issue. In a bad market though there's more choice so such properties can easily be avoided I'm afraid.

G_M

seeker901 wrote: »

......

We would like to know the following.

We understand that there is till a risk of recurrence even if the problem has been corrected. In this scenario we feel we are taking on a unwanted risk which is summarized as follows
a)Our insurance premium will increase since i will have to declare the structural movement history even though the problem has been corrected?Yes
b)The problem may recur and a new chapter in the insurance history will open and we may have difficulty in remortgaging and renewing my insurance?Yes but then even with an 'unaffected' property an unexpected problem may occur in the future
c)The problem may not occur , But I may have to declare the issue when I got to resell the property and will have to give a substantial discount.

In light of the above,

should we walk away from the deal?

or

Is is worth asking for a discount from the vendors looking at the above risks? if so how much.

It's always worth asking for a discount. Walk away? Depends how much you want to live there!

vax2002

I would want to know why this information was concealed.
First Job is to withdraw any offer due to concealed information.
This is the latest tactic of estate agents, get an offer, get them hooked, the drip feed the information and hopefully they will be to far in to wade back out.