Vendor won't let us view the property again until we sign the contract

pawlala

there must be something good about this property, I would have exchanged on another house by now with all this faffing about.

budgetdiyer

If your survey flagged up boiler / electrics may need attention why didn't you raise the issue earlier? (this is very common by the way, the surveyors are not qualified gas / electric engineers so put this on almost any property! Its there get out clause so you can't claim they didn't highlight potential issues, if there are any)

Its quite common for purchasers to insist vendors have gas appliances serviced or produce a gas safety certificate (so you'd know that the installation is safe.) You could request this via your solicitor?

Less common for electrics, but if you are concerned it should'nt be an issue for you to pay an electrician to take a quick look at the house. By the way an 'old' fusebox can be perfectly safe and the age of a fusebox is not a reliable means to assess the overall quality of an electrical installation.

sonastin

john_white wrote: »

ALL properties will burn down or blow up if they have old wiring!

Now i've heard it all.

Where did you hear that? It certainly hasn't been said on this thread. To clarify:

Not all old gas installations or electrics are unsafe. Many are perfectly fine and and have many useful years of service left in them. With regular maintenance, some old boilers have more useful life left in them than brand new piece of cheap rubbish. But if you aren't confident in your ability to tell the difference, get a specialist to look for you.

And on the other hand...

Some properties with unsafe boilers or electrics are inhabited. The fact that someone is living in the property doesn't dictate that the boiler or electrics in this particular property are safe. Don't use the fact that it is inhabited as a measure of whether something catastrophic is about to happen. If you aren't confident in your ability to tell how safe the boiler and/or electrics might be, get a specialist to look for you.

funkyd_2

The vendor is now refusing to complete by the SDLT deadline despite signing the contract on their new place yesterday.

We've said exchange Monday, complete by the 23rd or we will reconsider.

We "ignored" the gas and electric issues as we were saving the stamp duty.

I think if they come back and say no we will say they can complete by the date they choose but we're dropping our offer by £5k. No idea, just thinking aloud. Arrrgh!

betmunch

When you exchange set the completion date for the 23rd, or sooner (obviously) if they are refusing to do this do not exchange until they are aware that completion after the 23rd will be subject to them accepting the new terms, ie the reduction in price by £5k.

Sounds like you got a right pain in the neck!

john_white

sonastin wrote: »

Where did you hear that? It certainly hasn't been said on this thread. To clarify:

Not all old gas installations or electrics are unsafe. Many are perfectly fine and and have many useful years of service left in them. With regular maintenance, some old boilers have more useful life left in them than brand new piece of cheap rubbish. But if you aren't confident in your ability to tell the difference, get a specialist to look for you.

And on the other hand...

Some properties with unsafe boilers or electrics are inhabited. The fact that someone is living in the property doesn't dictate that the boiler or electrics in this particular property are safe. Don't use the fact that it is inhabited as a measure of whether something catastrophic is about to happen. If you aren't confident in your ability to tell how safe the boiler and/or electrics might be, get a specialist to look for you.

And where have I stated that an inhabited property is safe? Think you are getting confused with another poster. I was simply stating that without seeing the house you started giving examples of things going wrong simply on the basis they were old.

Anyway it's not exactly on topic for this thread.

funkyd_2

I've mentioned this in another thread but our current plan is as follows:

The stamp duty is going to be around £2k and at the moment the vendor is offering to pay £500 leaving £1500 to us.

If we let this go and look for somewhere else our costs will be at least £2k plus legal fees - say £500-600 and of course no guarantee it will work out. If we take the offer than we will have to pay more rent but only a little.

So, paying the duty on this place is the cheapest option.

If we can we want to try to get the vendor to pay £1000 as the completion date is the day we plan to go on holiday (paid for ages ago) and one of us won't be able to go.

Is it at all likely we might be able to get the estate agent to reduce their fee to give the vendor some more cash to pass to us? I'm thinking for them it will be better to get say £1500-1800 than nothing at all and lose the sale?

anselld

funkyd wrote: »

I've mentioned this in another thread but our current plan is as follows:

The stamp duty is going to be around £2k and at the moment the vendor is offering to pay £500 leaving £1500 to us.

If we let this go and look for somewhere else our costs will be at least £2k plus legal fees - say £500-600 and of course no guarantee it will work out. If we take the offer than we will have to pay more rent but only a little.

So, paying the duty on this place is the cheapest option.

If we can we want to try to get the vendor to pay £1000 as the completion date is the day we plan to go on holiday (paid for ages ago) and one of us won't be able to go.

Is it at all likely we might be able to get the estate agent to reduce their fee to give the vendor some more cash to pass to us? I'm thinking for them it will be better to get say £1500-1800 than nothing at all and lose the sale?

Why are the vendor refusing to complete by 23 given they know it will cost you money?

Why not stick to your plan and offer exchange and completion by 23 or the offer reduces by 2k? After all you have already swallowed the potential electric and boiler issues.

Yorkie1

I assume you've declared the £500 gifted deposit to your solicitor and mortgage lender? Anything like this is a related transaction for the purposes of stamp duty.

kazwookie

I don't understand why you are still messing around with this, I would have walked away by now, it is a buyers market, start to look for something else.

Have you seen the lease and accounts etc for this place yet?

And do NOT sign anything if you still want to go ahead till you have seen the information.