New house had subsidence

cycloneuk

I purchased an house that had subsidence and was underpinned, luckily i sold to a cash buyer 16 months later, i only found out close to exchange and decided to proceed after a structural survey, we didn't want to lose our buyer at the time also.

walk, infact run because you might regret it and you never know if the house may move again and require further works, chance may be small but if it did you would never sell a house that has had remedy work twice for subsidence.

If you still wanted to proceed then i would be dropping your offer to at least £380k or even less, a property that has had subsidence will be harder to sell since some lenders won't touch them and it will put people off.

cattie

rca779 wrote: »

As we are close to exchanging, can I use this as a reason to reduce my offer?

I was going to quote the extra insurance premiums, possible future trouble and difficulty when it comes to reselling?

My offer was already the full asking price of £445k?
Should I change this to say £430 or £435?

Thoughts please.

YES, definitely reduce your offer & I'd offer even lower than you suggest, much, much lower. Certainly not more than £400k would be my opinion.

I speak of somebody who bought a house that had had remedial work & it does affect your ability to sell at full market value. It wasn't a bargain buy either as I bought at the height of the housing market boom. Would I ever buy a property that had suffered past structural problems? Definitely not. I did sell my house last year, but could have got a lot more if it hadn't suffered past structural problems.

My insurance wasn't really much higher than it was before buying said house, but the fact that I was never able to consider searching for a new or cheaper provider whenever the renewal came in was a bit of a pain.

Usually when a property has had major remedial structural work under an insurance claim a 'Certificate of Structural Adequacy' is usually issued. It doesn't sound as though your solicitor has had sight of this. The certificate does give some comfort to potential buyers of a property.

What you might be able to do to try to find out if such a certificate has ever been granted is to ask the family to contact whoever the building has been insured with over the past years since the work was completed & ask if they have a copy of the certificate on file.

A homebuyers won't pick up on structural problems, you need a full structural survey & ask the surveyor to pay particular attention to past structural problems & remedies, which is what I did and then listen to his advice & voice any concerns you may still have.

suebfg

rca779 wrote: »

My solicitor simply asked the question whether or not the house had ever suffered from subsidence.

Would this not normally be picked up by a survey? I'm just a bit nervous as we are on the verge of buying a house (built in early 2000s) and our solicitor hasn't asked this question - should he have done???

rca779

There seems to be a lot of scare stories over something that happened 33 years ago and no sign of any problems since?

Should I really be that worried?

ruggedtoast

rca779 wrote: »

There seems to be a lot of scare stories over something that happened 33 years ago and no sign of any problems since?

Should I really be that worried?

I think this has been pretty much covered now. Houses with a history of subsidence have a lower market value and are harder and more expensive to ensure.

If you're not worried then you're not worried. A few insurers wont be worried as it was so long ago, but most wont touch you.

The next person who you try and sell to might also not be worried, or it might scare the bejesus out of them.

The biggest problem you have is that there is no documentation for the property, so people will tend to imagine the worst.