Reducing offer after survey

chickaroonee

I understand what those people are saying about not risking it falling through - but it's worth asking the question right? I think that's what I'm leaning towards. It strikes me the worst they can say is no, and then we'll have to suck it up or walk away.

aylithuk

it sounds like you've already mind up your mind to offer £175,000 so go ahead and do this.

If or when they say they need the £176,000 then decided if you really want to lose the house over £1,000.

Personally I wouldn't look to barter over this amount because it's a £1,000 against £175,000 - drop in the ocean spring to mind.

chickaroonee

I don't think I want to lose the house, no. I agree over £1k seems silly. However, it needs loads of work doing on it, most of it immediately, so any saving is worth having. I'm not trying to recoup those costs - I made the offer knowing it was in need of repair - but it makes me less inclined to pay over the odds for it.

malcolmffc

What repairs need doing? I'm just curious to know how a house can lose 25% of its value in 8 years

cr1mson

This is what I would do but you may not want to!

As you are getting a mortgage for it I would say that it has been valued at £175k and therefore you will effectively have to find an extra 1k as lender will only lend 70% (or whatever percentage applies) of £175k.

You had budgeted for valuation coming in at £176k so could borrow 70% of that. Now you will need to find an additional £700 and not sure how quickly you can do that.

If the won't budge then you can find it very quickly for some reason or maybe they will make you an offer.

jamesml

OP isn't getting a mortgage - has already said cash buyer.

I know what you are getting at about paying over the odds - but you were prepared to pay £176k when you made the offer - what has actually changed? A surveyor suggesting a grand lower?

I'm not loaded or with cash to spare, but £1k in this sort of purchase is nothing - what if they turned round and said forget it. If I was the seller, I've agreed a lower price for a cash deal, unless something actually came up as a result of the survey, I'd be tempted to tell you to stick it if you then tried to mess about afterwards - especially if it's as good a house as you say and it's had that much interest.

Are you prepared to lose the house over £1k? The worst that can happen isn't that they say no - its that they will go with another buyer.

bowlhead99

House valuation is not an exact science. The valuer rounded his estimate to the nearest 5k which was more than 99.4% of what you had agreed to pay.

You said you only wanted to pay 175. The seller needed 176 so he could at least clear his mortgage without being totally wiped out. You agreed to offer the 176, they accepted and everyone is friends.

Now you are going to tell the vendor that you dont want to 'overpay' 1000 against one third party opinion of valuation, so you would walk away and buy a different house bang on valuation and only waste the 800 fees and the several hours of your time and their time and their agents time and their solicitors time etc, and if they want to keep the sale and not have their house reposessed they should just suck it up?

I see you posted on House exchange gazundering help urgent advice within two hours of making this thread. That thread was about a buyer threatening to pull out over wanting a £1000 reduction . One sensible response was

jackomdj wrote: »

Ask yourself, do you think they will really pull out due to £1000? How much would they have already spent and not get ack if they pull out, ie solicitors, searches, mortgage fees. Personally I would call their bluff and refuse to play their game.

Your reply

chickaroonee wrote: »

I'd be tempted to call their bluff too.

If a vendor was on here, telling us that just before exchange, after the buyer had incurred costs and time, they were going to increase the price by an abritrary 1k - because frankly, they had always fancied getting an extra 1k and knew they were in a stronger financial and emotional position and could afford to wait for another sucker to come along instead, "well, we think the buyer would probably have to pay it now they're over a barrel!" - you would surely say this was unethical and the world would be a better place if people didn't screw other people over.

So, sorry I can't think of a nice way for you to word your dastardly plan when presenting it to the seller. I hope it fails, because gazumping and gazundering, while perfectly legal and beneficial to one party, are not very respectable in the eyes of the other, or society at large.

kidmugsy

chickaroonee wrote: »

We're cash buyers and have agreed a purchase price of 176k for a house

You said it - you agreed the price.

giraffe69

You said it - you agreed the price.

Surely when you agree a price it is subject to contract and survey. Ugly words like gazumping and gazundering usually apply to last minute changes designed to extract money where the alternative would be huge waste of time and resources.
If you have a survey and it throws up a major problem you could not have been aware of which will cost many thousands then renegotiating the price is perfectly reasonable.
In the context of house buying though I would regard £1k(as in this case) as not worth doing it for.

chickaroonee

It's not gazundering at all, the offer was subject to survey. My solicitor was quite firm that she thought we should reduce our offer to what it's been valued at, but as it is a small amount we were undecided, hence asking for opinions here.

I'm quite bemused that some of you think this is the same as threatening to pull out of a chain the week before completion because you want an extra grand back in cash. I don't see it that way at all, but you're entitled to your opinion I guess.

In terms of why the value has dropped so much, not sure really, I think a lot of is due to the market dropping not just the state of the house (although it is in a poor condition). Structurally OK, but no maintenance has been done in years and it needs windows/doors replacing/damp sorting/quite a bit of work to the roof and external joinery plus usual decoration. The gas boiler looks like it has never been serviced and the electrics look a bit dodgy too. I personally think they overpaid when they bought it.

I think we're going to keep to the agreed offer in any case as we don't want to lose the sale.