Selling Dilemma

motherofstudents

They shoudl be able to cut an inspection hatch so in the carpeted rooms the carpet will go back no probs. Laminate is not so easy so can they just do the carpeted rooms first and see what's under there. If the joists are bad under there, maybe there can be an assumption that the joists under the laminate are in a similar condition. I can understand why you have not done the repairs because although it is a simple enough job to replace joists, if you can't manage to do it yourself, it will obviously cost a lot more to pay someone to do them. You don't really want to be left with a mess and then the prospective buyers decide not to continue. I don't think I would let them ruin your floors without reinstating them.

FBaby

I'd be very wary. The same thing happened to me. All was going very well, the buyers were VERY interested, were only doing a survey for the lender's peace of mind, but they had lived right next door and knew the properties on that street were sound and there were no concerns. Then out of the blue, was told that the survey had come up with some little areas of concerns and they wanted an expert to come just to make sure it was nothing to worry about. I was overly reassured by the agent it was standard practice.

A week later, got a call from the agent to say that the expert had stated that some repairs would be required at a cost of £20K and that the buyers were therefore requesting the price to be dropped (again) by £15K. I became suspicous at this stage and said I would agree nothing until I saw a copy of the survey and statement from the 'expert'. This only came forward when I threatened to put the property back on the market.

It turned out that the survey had come back absolutely fine, highlighting some small issues I already knew about (hence the initial reduction in price) and nothing concerning. The 'expert' report turned out to be a number of ridiculous quotes (we later found out the guy was a builder and had his mates coming to do the quotes). I refused to lower the price on that basis, they agreed to the initial one, we proceeded, until at the very last minute, they said their lender wouldn't go with it unless we dropped the price by £10K. I told them to get lost.

Turned out for the best as it prompted us to keep and rent the property which was the right decision for us. Looking back, it was so obvious they were on a mission to play it up. I'm a single foreign mum who was desperate to sell, they thought they could have me easily.

I would definitely request to see the survey before agreeing to any such drastic measures.

G_M

Make lifting floors etc dependant on either
1) re-instatement to condition as before as defined by your surveyor (paid for by them?)
2) or payment of the cost for you to re-instate.

This needs to be a water-tight commitment - discuss with your solicitor. Or cash up front. Otherwise if they pull out of the sale you'll spend the next 6 months trying to get them to re-instate/pay.

lissadenton

property.advert wrote: »

Please understand this simple fact.

If your house requires £35k of work doing to it, then I will want perhaps £70k off the full market value once done. Why so much ? because the first £35k is needed for works and the other £35k is financing costs, potential overruns and some profit for me for undertaking the work when I could have paid full price and got the house next door where the owners had fixed it all up.

You obviously don't like the solution, which is to fix it yourself and then sell it for full market value.

So let the house go for £25,000 -I don't think so.

If you can find a house in a desirable area that needs work doing for that price then good luck to you. This house does need work-not disputing that-but it is not a wreck.

lissadenton

some very interesting and helpful comments here. Thank you all so much-it has certainly given us something to think about.

I wish I had written sooner-not a lot of time left.

Fiddlestick

lissadenton wrote: »

We want to help this young couple -they probably have spent in excess of £500 on two surveys-so they are serious-but if as a result of the expert's-they walk away-we will be left with 4 floors all wrecked-how on earth will we attract another buyer with a house looking like that.

Put yourself in their shoes.

If you had a survey done that advised of severe problems with the flooring that would cost £lolexpensive to fix, would YOU walk away?

lissadenton

Fiddlestick wrote: »

Put yourself in their shoes.

If you had a survey done that advised of severe problems with the flooring that would cost £lolexpensive to fix, would YOU walk away?

Yes-I would-which is why we want to be decent towards them. If they do really want the house then yes-we want to be helpful-we don't want to be walked over though.

That was what it was/is feeling like

Sugared-frog

We've just bought a house needing work doing to it but when we got the survey back we didn't renegotiate on price (perhaps naive), but as we could see that it was being sold needing the work doing it we had based our offer on that - we are not buying to make a profit but to buy a home.

We did additional surveys including a cavity wall tie one (as requested by our bank), and part of the agreement was that the surveyor would make 6 holes and would make good afterwards. The house is now ours and I've not noticed where the holes are yet (though I haven't specifically looked for them either).

Have you paid to have your own survey carried out so that you know the condition of the property? And to get a reasonable idea of how much it would cost to put right those items. It might be worth doing so that you have an idea of whether any reduction they are asking for is sensible.

The house is sold as seen surely and reductions in offer due to survey should be for things that they didn't know about at the time they made the offer.

Bravehearted_2

What they are asking is not unreasonable and you know it.

It's very easy to ensure that the survey is done tidely. It seems to me that what you're concerned about is the result of the survey which could make them walk. Well, you cant expect them to buy blindly just so as not to hurt your feelings.

The reference to the other house sellinh for 28k more is pointless - different houses worth only what buyer's going to pay.

If the roles were reversed would you not want to be thorough?

DannyboyMidlands

I think that what they are asking is perfectly reasonable but it will damage the laminate, it's imposible to get that tongue and groove stuff back down again. A buyer would be very foolish to agree to reinstate it perfectly.

Personally I wouldn't jeopardise this or any future sale by being precious over some cheap laminate flooring that any future buyer will want rid of anyway. Infact after the survey I would probably just replace the boards temporarilly so that any future buyers can have a good old look around.

I don't really understand why you're being so difficult. Do you want to sell the place or not?