Buyer holding me hostage on house sale

macman

If you give in and have the work done yourself, then there is still no guarantee that he will then proceed with the purchase-and there is nothing you can do about it then. Until you exchange, he can walk away without consequence.
Furthermore, if you concede, then he will have you hooked, and demand further work be done.
Decide whether you are prepared to lower your price or not, and leave it at that.

eidand

look, there is also a high risk that this buyer will ask you to spend money on stuff he wants and then pull out anyway. You can be left with a big hole in your pockets. I would not recommend doing stuff like this. 

m0bov

Also, you should not be speaking directly to the buyer, use your EA.

pinkshoes

Have you put it back on the market yet? If not, do it ASAP!

Marvel1

Drop him, advise agent to re-market.

lady1964

Our buyer had an electrician look at the electrics in our 70’s built house; according to him, our house needed a re-wire costing around £5k. We got our own electrician round, who said there were no issues, he replaced a cracked socket, gave us a report, total cost around £150. We passed it on to our buyer who accepted it and continues to proceed.

Falafels

lady1964 said:

Our buyer had an electrician look at the electrics in our 70’s built house; according to him, our house needed a re-wire costing around £5k. We got our own electrician round, who said there were no issues, he replaced a cracked socket, gave us a report, total cost around £150. We passed it on to our buyer who accepted it and continues to proceed.

This is the thing; the buyer in this instance sounds as though he/she was acting in good faith, evidenced by the fact they're proceeding despite the disparity in reports.

The OP's buyer is an opportunist who is a taker of pee pee.

HanPop

Hi, I just want to say that I had a buyer pull out at the point of exchange and I was worried about the solicitor costs too. However they didn’t bill me for anything and when I went in to see them once we had a new buyer I was shocked that they said it would just be the same price as we originally agreed and not any more.  This was all paid on completion. 

Mickey666

Marvel1 said:

Drop him, advise agent to re-market.

Yes.  Not only will that show the buyer that you won't be messed around it will also put pressure on the agent to try to persuade the buyer to act more reasonably.  After all, the agent won't want to go through re-marketing if they can avoid it.

Crashy_Time

Let him have it for 100k and move on.