HELP-Surveyors report is bad news - how to negotiate house price?

nelly_2

some of them prices are ridiculous, to change chimney flashings requiers one roll of lead and 1 days work, whoever does that will be making over £500 for a days work.

dougk_2

£400 - 500 a day is not out of the ordinary down here in the south for a days work by a good quality, busy tradesman! (or a cowboy to that matter!)

If you call in an IT consultant you can be looking at over £1k per day for instance!

Hence partly the extra cost in housing in the south. You have to pay people more to do the work so house prices increase to reflect that.

malteser

Hi

dougk - the mortgage company valuation says " the general condition of the property appears consistent with its age and type of construction, but some works of repair and maintenance are required"

although from all your posts i'm not taking what the surveyor says as gospel but its certainly more than repair and maintenance thats required!

frugal_dougal - funny you should say that my dad's quite keen if we decide not to go for it!

robby-01 - that was a very interesting read.

infact thanks to all of you for commenting, its really helping.

ok a quick update - we gave the estate agent the go ahead to get some quotes and dropped off the surveyors report yesterday. we weretold it would take about a week to get all the quotes in. this morning we called to ask a few more questions and find out exactly when the agents were going to let the vendors know whats going on. well the agent interrupted us and said they gave the vendors a copy of the survey report and our original letter last night and they were meeting with the vendors this morning to discuss. the agents mentioned that they had a few quotes and they were not hugely different to the survey report.

now i'm thinking that maybe the agent got quotes higher than the survey report and thought lets quickly tell the vendors whats going on and especially the bit about the fact we will take some of the cost on ourselves(10k out of 35k) its all guesswork from our side but its strange that yesterday they were going out to get quotes and would need to arrnge to let tradespeople in the house but suddenly we arte about to start negotiating i think.

also a bit peeved that they didnt ask our permission to show our letter and survey report to the vendor. although could be a good thing i guess.

going out of my mind trying to figure out whats going on!
m.

robby-01

malteser I can see your point about the report being yours but you cant expect the vendor to consider a reduction without seeing it.The agent wants his fee, you want the house and the vendors haven't told you to go away yet .So all you need to do now is get together and crash out a figure.My guess is that the vendor who you say is retiring will be as unhappy as you at this point.
I have bought and sold a number of properties they all (even newish ones )hit problems at this stage in a sale.It is always the buyer at this point who has the upper hand.
My advice would be to seek the highest possible reduction based on quotes you obtain yourself .(They will not be the same as quotes obtained by the vendor or his agent.)The Worst thing that can happen to you is that the vendor does not accept your revised offer and remarkets the house.His agent will not want him to do this and will discourage it as he will then be effectively selling the same house twice for only one fee.
If they do put it back on and you still want to proceed, you can always up your offer again .You are involved in a game of show and tell.Try not to appear to keen and at the same time allow a little room for the vendor to move .Be prepared to negotiate and try to put the problems on the report out of your mind. As stated earlier it is pretty standard stuff for a house of that age.The surveyor was paid by you so he was bound to work in your favour.
If all goes well you will buy this house with a sizeable price reduction ,and if you get the jobs done at the right cost you could end up with some money in the bank too.

malteser

quick update - we have renegotiated the original price and it has been accepted. theres a heck of a lot to do but we just need to get in there and plan now.

thanks for all your help guys. no doubt i'll be posting questions on the diy forum very soon!

m.

frugal_dougal_3

Malteser,

Congratulations !!!!!!!!!

Yes do let us know how you are getting on from time to time.


f_d