Buyer wants to renegotiate after survey

ArmoGooner

My buyer is at the bottom of a five person chain. We accepted an offer at £10k below the asking price because he is in rented accommodation and can move quickly. The house we are buying is significantly more expensive, and we have very little wiggle room.

After the survey, our buyer asked to bring his builder around to check out the issues raised. Ten days later, our EA received a copy of the survey and a quote from the builder, and a demand that £11,500 be taken off the asking price to deal with all Level 3 and Level 2 issues raised on the Home buyers report.

Having seen a copy of the survey, the main cost and work is to fix two flat roofs at the end of their economic life (around £5k). These roofs clearly need attention - and the fact that they needed work would have been obvious to a conscientious viewer - even a layman. The property was viewed twice before the survey. In fact, the surveyor valued the property at the price we previously settled on (i.e. having taken the defects into account)

We priced the property with this maintenance in mind, and reduced it to give the buyer "credit" for his proceed-able position. He knows the chain is time sensitive, and he knows he is holding things up.

After discussions with my EA and family, we decided to firmly refuse to negotiate. The buyer is essentially asking me to sell my property at an undervalue, hoping the pressure of needing to exchange and complete will force me to the table.

We have heard nothing more from the buyer for almost a week. My EA chased for two days, but the buyer has refused to engage. As a result, I have told my EA to back off and leave him be lest we look desperate (we are not - he thinks we are).

Today, I asked my EA to send an e-mail, with a presumptive close - i.e. "we assume you are going ahead". To be honest, we would probably be able to live with a reasonable contribution (£5k perhaps) to seal the deal, but the buyer's aggressive position (£11.5k or else!) has put my back up and I am loathe to make the first move during this impasse.

I am scratching my head, trying to figure out my next move. I don't want to lose the sale over £5k, but I don't want to hand the initiative to him either.

Thoughts?

Fire_Fox

If you were not willing to negotiate based on the survey you should have made that clear when you accepted the offer, it's standard practice to do so. They don't necessarily know you priced the place based on the state of the flat roofs, they may have thought they were getting a bargain because you need a quick sale, and are now getting a house at market value that needs £10K of work. The buyer seems to have lost the credit for being in a proceedable position.

natlol

What I would do and what you should do are probably different. I can honestly say I would tell them to do one as they obviously new the condition before hand, you have a similar valuation with the defects and have already reduced.

But that said...I suppose it depends on how much you want the sale to complete. If he thinks you are 'desperate' and is chancing it now, what are the chances of him trying to drop again close to exchange?

Good luck

FBaby

The exact same thing happened to me (quite spookingly, made me wonder if it was the same buyer!). Like you, I agreed to lower the asking price by £10k on the account that the house need a bit of loving care. They did a survery, subsequently got builders in (EA told me it was just another surveyor, standard practice, nothing to worry about), who came up with quotes worth £20K (told me it was the surveyor who quoted this figure...), resulting in the buyer saying they would be prepared to settle at another £10K less. I told them I refused any agreement until I had a copy of the survey. They staled until I told them I was putting the house back on the market. Got the survey, conveniently removing the first page with the assessed value of the house, however, it stated that the house was in decent condition for its age, quoting no other work required then what had been stated before agreeing on the price. I told them that I absolutely refused to lower the price and would put the house back on the market in two days if they didn't agree to proceed. They relented at the last minute. We continued with the proceedings, solicitors instructed etc... until just before exchange, they came back saying that their mortgage had been turned down unless they lowered it by £10K. By then, I'd started to take it personally and told them to get lost once and for all.

Ironically, I discovered a few of my acquaintances knew them, he was a builder himself, and was looking to buy a house as cheap as possible to rent to his daughter (who was claiming benefits, but that's another story). As it happened, the rental estimate provided by the survey made me think about forgetting about selling and looking at renting...I did the work required that had been quoted at £20k for under £5K, rented the place pretty quickly for the exact amount quoted on their survey and have had the best tenants since... In the end, their messing about turned to be a blessing in disguise (although I could have done without the stress!).

Good luck to you, I really hope your buyers are not playing the same game with you.

Mickygg

Its a tough one. I had to renegotiate on my house I bought because of damp. I had no idea about damp, and you could easily argue a buyer may not know whether a flat roof needs work or not, I probably wouldn't.

If you don't want to lose buyer I'd go back with a take it or leave it deal of £5k. This is what my sellers did.


You don't want this cropping up again and again if you keep losing buyers. As said above you needed to accept offer saying under no circumstances will you go lower.

Nan_Dingle

It's a buyers market in many (most) areas, so gazundering and cheeky offers are rampant.

OP, have you tried sharing the £5K pain along the 5-person chain so everyone can move on?

the buyer's aggressive position (£11.5k or else!) has put my back up

Easy to say, but you need to see this only in terms of cost/benefit and not take it personally.

hcb42

What was the house valued at? this is the key.

If the valuer valued it at £11K short, then it will be impacting his mortgage, and he may not be able to raise the difference.

if the valuer states the value is the same as your selling price, despite the works, then I would hold firm (or give a notional reduction of a couple of k or something).

happened to me recently, buyers had two surveys, was about £5K difference on the valuation and the offer price we agreed on, I dropped immediately as I didnt want to lose a sale over £5K.

ArmoGooner

Thanks for the responses. The house was valued by the surveyor at exactly the price we agreed upon pre-survey - so despite the £10k of works the buyer thinks are needed to bring it up to near-perfect, the surveyor still thinks its worth the agreed asking price.

This is the key for me - I know his opening gambit of £11.5k was intentionally high and unrealistic- however, it was couched as a demand, not an invitation to negotiate. Had he said he wanted a contribution instead, I would have been far more willing to talk.

I am not going to lose the sale for the sake of £5k - that would be silly. I like the suggestion of a take it or leave it offer - we'll see how he responds to our "presumptive close" (earlier message).