Renegotiating after survey - Help!

mandamcmoo

We’re first time buyers and when we made our offer, we made it clear that we wanted to be in before March 24th, to benefit from the Stamp Duty Holiday, and the vendors agreed that we would work towards this.

Unfortunately, complications on their side meant that our solicitors didn’t receive the contract until yesterday, so clearly that isn’t going to happen. This means we’re down £1750.

The house is a fixer-upper. We were given the impression that it would need remedial works to bring things up to standard, and hoping to replace the boiler at some point in the next year, and for there to be some rewiring, but nothing immediate. We were hoping that there would be money left in our budget to replace the kitchen, which is, quite frankly, an abomination.

We’ve had a gas inspection and an electrics inspection since the survey. Upshot is that we actually need a full rewire and a complete boiler replacement. Let’s assume that’s £5000, £3000 for the boiler which needs moving as well as replacing and £2000 for the rewire.

The cost of these two things will wipe us out – and make it impossible for us to do anything to the kitchen, or any of the other remedial works to fix up the exterior, or decorate, for quite some time.

The vendors were, before we made our offer, on the verge of accepting an offer of £170,000 from a developer, who would have been paying in cash. We felt that we need to make our mortgage based offer significant enough to be worth choosing over the cash offer, so we offered £175,000.

Also, a negative on our side, we haven’t had our mortgage offer through yet.

TLDR: We’d like to renegotiate, but we don’t know how it works, or how much to ask for. Would the reduction in price come off the overall cost of the mortgage, or is there a way that we could have that money directly to cover the cost of the works?


Thanks in advance!

cattie

Overall price comes off the mortgage I'm afraid.

You probably won't need a full rewire straight away, nor a new boiler if it is still working. When I bought this house & moved in, I then became aware it was in need of complete renovation, boiler & electrics out of the ark. I didn't get the house for a price that reflected the work, but luckily for me, had the cash to get all the work done.

However, if I hadn't had the cash, the boiler probably would have chugged on for a couple more years as it had been regularly serviced & the electrics were not dangerous, just very, very outdated & again could have been left for a while. What I am trying to say is if you want the house but don't have the money to do the work at the moment, consider saving up & getting them done at a future date.

Of course try to renegotiate with the vendor. Very often a 50/50 split on essential works is what ends up being agreed, but if you can get them to reduce the price to give you better than this, all to the good.

Good luck.

mandamcmoo

Thanks for the response Cattie!

The boiler has actually been condemned and shut off today by the guy we got in. I don't think anyone will turn it back on for us, so yeah, it will have to be done immediately.

With the electrics - we could possibly make do, but honestly... I don't want to run the risk!

50/50 split is better than nothing!

I am a proper FTB - I have been reading bits and pieces about retentions? Do you know anything about them?

Thank you!