"Subject to survey" offers

Jaymay

Hi folks, advice needed! We are selling our house, (in Scotland if that makes any difference to the answers)

Thanks to some VERY poor communication from our estate agent we accepted an offer on our house that we SUBSEQUENTLY found out was subject to survey.

I thought this process of survey would take 2-3 days max, but it was 5 working days after we accepted the offer until the formal arrangements were made, and transpires that they are getting separate contractors out to look at the roof, chimney and back walls. This process is going to take a further week then we will be into a 4 day bank hol weekend before making any progress. This is on the back of what we felt was an extremely positive home report. (Mostly 1s, a few 2s mostly based on age of property).

Is this a reasonable delay, given that our property was only on the market for a week and is now off the market in the "under offer" limbo for what is going to be over 2 weeks without any firm commitment from the purchaser?

Many thanks for your advice,

littlegreenfrog_2

Think about it from the buyer's point of view. Would you (or could you, even) pay a professional to carry out a survey on someone else's property before making an offer or knowing whether the vendor was prepared to accept your offer? I would think not. So then. Would you be happy to make an offer on a property on the basis of what it appears to be worth (assuming that your job does not have anything to do with valuing, buying or selling property), and still be contractually bound to honour that offer if the survey comes back and says it's not worth as much as you thought?

davidmcn

To be fair, offers tend also to be subject to mortgage (don't know whether this one explicitly is), and you typically have a similar delay before anything much happens. You can try readvertising in the meantime but may pee them off.

Seems odd they're getting contractors out if there weren't any problems highlighted in the HR?

davidmcn

littlegreenfrog wrote: »

Would you (or could you, even) pay a professional to carry out a survey on someone else's property before making an offer or knowing whether the vendor was prepared to accept your offer?

That was the normal procedure in Scotland until fairly recently, so it's not too alien a concept to some of us!

halifaxmortgage

Jaymay - It's a perfectly reasonable delay. We're in a similar position to your buyers and you need to understand that they are making one of the biggest financial commitments, therefore unless you specified that your only looking for a certain type of buyer, you can only wait and allow them to do their checks. I'm sure everything will be fine once they are happy your property has no major issues.

littlegreenfrog_2

You know what they say: caveat emptor (buyer beware). They are making a very important financial commitment which could be one of the best or worst decisions they ever make. Any sensible buyer is going to want to do their due diligence before committing themselves.

G_M

seems perfectly reasonable.

Buyer is commiting to spending 100s of 000s of £s. Perfectly sensible to want to reassure himself it's money well spent.

As for the timescale - it seems pretty quick.

What's your hurry?

Jaymay

Thanks for the replies guys, I totally understand they can get a survey if they want but I thought this would happen fairly quickly? It was more the timescale that I was wondering about, and the fact that we are essentially off the market whilst they make, what appears to me, to be fairly leisurely arrangements.

The root of it is that really the sale feels very uncertain whilst we wait for these contractors, and the only people really being penalised are us. They are free to consider their options whilst we are all but locked into this "offer subject to survey" limbo and not still on the market. Hence my impression was the buyer should really be making these arrangements faster than 2 weeks.

littlegreenfrog_2

They might not be able to get anyone to do it quicker than that. It's nearly Easter, as you say we have bank holidays coming up and people with kids might be taking time off. Surveyors, lenders and solicitors will have been rushed off their feet in the last few months by BTL'ers trying to complete before 1st April (NB - not sure if the situation is the same in Scotland) so don't be surprised if there is a backlog. These things do take a bit of time.

Socksey

In Scotland, any offer that requires a mortgage will have this condition attached to it. A lender needs to know the property is a sound collateral for a loan. If this condition wasn't included and the survey came back unsatisfactory, the buyer would have entered a contract to buy a house that he couldn't get a mortgage on and it would cost him a small fortune to get out of the contract. It all gets legal much quicker in Scotland than in the rest of the UK, which does make the whole buying and selling process much less stressful.
It would be remiss of your buyers solicitors not to include this. So it's nothing to worry about.

halifaxmortgage

2 weeks is not a long time IMHO. If you were looking for a very quick process, then you should have specified this when they placed the offer on your property.