Would these survey results put you off?

bazmattaz

Why would you expect a discount due to the work highlighted?

Yep and being the buyer I don't think we'll get this money off. It would be great to get some money off for the chimney stack and roof......maybe some of the damp.

But obviously the seller has no obligation to lower the price. It just that we might walk away from the sale. I'm not sure the house is worth the price we agreed if it now needs 20k or so of work!

Needadvice2

Personally I wouldn't. Points 1 & 3 would put me off. Chimney sounds a bit worrying too. It is a lot combined.

I agree with what someone else posted about it being disruptive. Think about when you're trying to get settled in & have a lot of structural work to be completed, floors lifted, joists re-done etc. Sometimes these tasks can be bigger than anticipated once they're started

It all really depends on the spare time/money & if you think it's a worth while investment.

novelty-socks

Do you mind me asking how much your plastering was? We’ll need that too.

I couldn't tell you offhand I'm afraid. The £30k we paid covered all the work apart from the bathroom furniture, which we bought separately.

I would say that rewiring and plastering etc is properly disruptive. You'll want to plan to be living somewhere else when they do all that work (or expect to slow down the builders and incur extra hassle and stress!).

Fix Damp + joists - £2k - £4k
Plastering - £3k-£4k
Electrics - £5k - £6k
Roof - £500 (just got a quote today)
Support under upstairs chimney - ???

One thing I would say is that we got various quotes for bits and pieces before we exchanged, but it was only once we had the keys that we could actually get in a bunch of builders to take a look properly, give their opinions and start talking through ideas.

For example, we hadn't even thought of replacing and moving radiators, but with the carpets coming out and the floorboards coming up anyway, it made sense to do so - suddenly we had more efficient heating and spaces that were more usable.

Same story for stuff like ethernet wires and cabling. Might as well put in some network points a the same time to improve internet availability.

I guess what I'm saying is that once you start pulling apart the structure of a place, it's really worth looking at what else it's feasible to do at the same time. Take the time to find some good builders (people who specialize in period property work), go round the place room by room and get them to give you their ideas and opinions.

(It's a good way to separate the good ones from the chancers too, and I think every single builder we spoke to have another idea that we ended up incorporating.

If you're in north London, I can recommend the builder we used, if that would be helpful.

ciderboy2009

Am I the only person looking at this thinking that it's a pretty good survey report for a 120 year old house?

I would get an electrician in to look at the wiring - it may just be a case of replacing the fuse board (should be less than £500) and the wiring is all ok.

The chimney breast is a slight concern but it would depend on how long ago it was done - if before or shortly after the current owner purchased the house then it's lasted a fair time as it is.

There is no mention of any visible roof spread so I wouldn't worry too much about the roof - again it was probably done a while ago so any problems should have shown up by now.

Adding some air bricks is a quick and easy job - the odds of there being any need to do anything with the timbers are quite low (I would expect to see a specific mention if the floors were 'bouncing' etc).

To me it just reads like the usual surveyor covering their backside report.

Ian_875

One thing to bare in mind is that money off the price doesn't mean money in your hand.

If you get say £20k off a purchase price, it doesn't mean you suddenly have £20k in your bank to play with, it means you borrow £20k less.

Let's say a property is £200k and you've got a 10% deposit of £20k. If they knock £20k off the price is now £180k, and your deposit is £18k. You've only really given yourself an 'extra' £2k despite getting £20k off the price.

Unless you already have the reserves to fund the work upfront I'd walk away.

Speaking as someone who dropped out of purchasing a property at the top of our budget that had a bad survey. The seller offered us money off but that wouldn't' really make any real world difference - we still wouldn't have had the money to do the work!

For what it's worth the house we turned down was £160k and we ended up buying one for £110k instead. This gave us an extra £5k to do the work required on the £110k house (none of which was urgent, just updating/decorating)

martindow

Are you able to phone the surveyor? They are often much more open in a conversation than what they are willing to put in a written report. In the past I have found these chats to be quite reassuring.


What is the house value in the report? If the price of the house reflects its condition the seller is likely to be resistant to reducing the price.