FTB mortgage retention and damp issues - help!

weebles93

We are first time buyers and our house buying experience is starting to get a bit messy! I am getting to the end of my tether and we feel so close to the sale collapsing. We love the house so much so I'm finding this really difficult.

The house we are purchasing was on up for sale for offers over £80000, we offered £82000 and they pushed us up to £83000.

We applied for our mortgage through Nationwide. Shortly after getting the valuation and homebuyers report done, Nationwide got in touch to say that they were retaining £2000 on the mortgage due to high damp readings in some of the downstairs rooms. To get the retention lifted, there needs to be investigation and the issue resolved.

The vendors had previously had damp-proofing done which was still under guarantee. They got the person who carried this out to do the report. This "report" said that there wasn't really a damp issue, but that it would be good to get an extractor fan fitted. The guy didn't even spell the address correctly and the report itself doesn't really make sense and contradicted itself - this, coupled with him saying he "never bothered" to become a member of the PCA meant the report was not accepted by our lender.

Fast forward a week and we've had another report carried out by Rentokil. They have said that there is rising damp on the ground floor, and that it will cost approx £750 - £2000 to fix. This was a verbal estimate, we'll find out the official quote when we get the written report tomorrow.

Questions
Does anybody have any advice about what we should do in this situation?
Do we push for the vendors to complete the work before moving out?
Do we take a lower mortgage of £81000 and sort it ourselves when we move in?
Is it reasonable to ask the vendors to pay for it if we wait it out and take out the whole mortgage?
Do we offer to go halves?

The situation is being made more difficult due to the fact that the vendors of the house they are purchasing are putting alot of pressure on them to complete their sale - so any delays or disruption are just adding to the stress.

If anybody has any advice or stories from experience we would love to hear - we are seriously struggling to see how this is going to continue positively!

Doozergirl

The whole thing is a joke.

These companies will literally sell injected DPC after injected DPC and for some reason, mortgage companies think that they know what they're doing. They don't. They don't address the original source of the issue and an injected DPC is snake oil. It's the render they put on the inside walls that hides the damp for a while, but never solves the issue. I deal with the actual main issues all the time- after their expensive treatments don't work.

However, in order to satisfy your lender, you can send the report from Rentokil and get the price knocked off the agreed price with the vendor.

Then you save yourself some money and find out exactly what the issue is and get that sorted - it's often an inexpensive maintenance issue that is to blame, but these salespeople don't make money from that!!

What kind of walls have the problem? Have you seen evidence of damp? Those meters don't provide proof, you want proof from your own eyes, hands or indeed, nose. Happy to provide help to find the source if you can give us some more details of where it is...

Tiglet2

When you have the report, ask your solicitor to send it to the seller's solicitor asking for either a reduction in purchase price or an allowance to be provided by the sellers on completion.

weebles93

@doozergirl

It's a terraced house and as far as we know the damp is contained in the middle room on the ground floor. The living room is to the front of the dining room, and the kitchen is to the back.

I was worried that rentokil would come back with something like this regardless of whether it was the real issue or not,its hard to know as we aren't clued up in damp! We'll get the written report through tomorrow, so we'll see what that brings.

flashg67

Having owned a number of Victorian terraced houses, I've managed to cure 99% of damp issues - often just by ventilation and heating, sorting gutters, removing previous repair attempts etc. As already said, putting waterproof cement render/plaster, either inside or outside will hide the issue and cause more issues later on.
I'd send the report, negotiate as much as you can off the price and sort it out once you're in.

Doozergirl

Middle walls are the most annoying. It's unlikely to be bad though.

Are the floors solid or suspended wood?

Is the kitchen an extension?

weebles93

@doozergirl

As far as we know the kitchen isn't an extension. The floors are solid - they had them done when they moved in around 7 years ago, they were suspended wood previously.

Doozergirl

weebles93 wrote: »

@doozergirl

As far as we know the kitchen isn't an extension. The floors are solid - they had them done when they moved in around 7 years ago, they were suspended wood previously.

:eek:

There's your problem. Old houses really weren't built to be messed with using cement. They're supposed to breathe. Cement doesn't. You create routes for damp that were never open before.

A new house with concrete floors will have a plastic damp proof course and a damp proof membrane for the floor that overlaps the course. It keeps the damp out entirely.

Old houses don't block it out, they are designed to breathe. Lime mortar, suspended wooden floors with airflow beneath them, they allow damp to be drawn out of the house.

If you fill an existing house with concrete, you put the membrane down across the floor, but there's nothing to stop it coming up the internal walls as they have no DPC in the wall itself. The walls are then the only outlet for the damp from the earth underneath to escape by breathing, except they end up overwhelmed.

Injected DPCs don't work, in my opinion. The waterproof render put over the top keeps it hidden in the wall for the medium term, that's all.

It should be a low level problem if there are no leaks able to track under the floors, but what they've done can't be undone now.

Not a clever move to replace suspended floors with concrete.

weebles93

Hmm, that makes alot of sense.
Any advice about a fix?

Doozergirl

Erm, well ideally you'd return it to a suspended floor. It depends on how thick that concrete is, but the historic buildings consultant I've used suggests cutting back the concrete just around the perimeter of the wall so it's about a foot away from it, breaking the damp proof membrane and allowing the ground to breathe a bit by replacing the concrete in that area with Limecrete and the insulation with breathable insulations that are available available. Lime plaster on the actual wall as well, so it that can breathe too. Avoid vinyl paints, wallpapers and floor coverings.

Rentokil will tell you something completely different, but the best way to treat an old house is to treat it like an old house and stop expecting them to perform like new ones when they're not built the same.

Bit of homework for you:
https://www.heritage-house.org/damp-and-condensation/managing-damp-in-old-buildings.html

Slithery

weebles93 wrote: »

The floors are solid - they had them done when they moved in around 7 years ago, they were suspended wood previously.

So then the vendors have most likely created the problem themselves. Suspended wooden floors are designed to breath so that damp can escape, by replacing this with a solid floor they have cut off all of the escape routes for the moisture.