Reduce offer after survey

youth_leader

The seller might be more amenable to negotiation if you forward the relevant extracts of the survey to your EA, to be forwarded to them.  I'd never been in my loft, and had no idea of the works required in there.  My buyer's surveyor had furnished him with outrageous quotes which he forwarded to his mortgage company. 

lookstraightahead

StandingInTheSun said:

Welcome to MSE where apparently asking for a reduction after a survey is akin to murdering someone.

You want the house.
The survey has brought up serious issued you were unaware of (which is the whole point of a survey!)
You've had these issues priced.
It is 100% acceptable to ask for the reduction based on this. It's up to the seller whether they accept it or not.

Please ignore those saying to follow the valuation given for your mortgage and if it is OK then don't ask - this will have been a separate valuation survey and they will have barely looked at the place, if at all. It is meaningless.

A full structural survey is a general idea of potential issues based on the surveyors knowledge.
We don't know whether the builders have visited the house to give quotes
Asking for a reduction 'may' result in the vendor pulling out.
The house May have been valued with the work in mind.
The mortgage offer will need amending.

ive just bought a house with loads of issues that the surveyor pointed out. I didn't ask for a reduction as it was good value for money in comparison to others.

StandingInTheSun

lookstraightahead said:

StandingInTheSun said:

Welcome to MSE where apparently asking for a reduction after a survey is akin to murdering someone.

You want the house.
The survey has brought up serious issued you were unaware of (which is the whole point of a survey!)
You've had these issues priced.
It is 100% acceptable to ask for the reduction based on this. It's up to the seller whether they accept it or not.

Please ignore those saying to follow the valuation given for your mortgage and if it is OK then don't ask - this will have been a separate valuation survey and they will have barely looked at the place, if at all. It is meaningless.

A full structural survey is a general idea of potential issues based on the surveyors knowledge.
We don't know whether the builders have visited the house to give quotes
Asking for a reduction 'may' result in the vendor pulling out.
The house May have been valued with the work in mind.
The mortgage offer will need amending.

ive just bought a house with loads of issues that the surveyor pointed out. I didn't ask for a reduction as it was good value for money in comparison to others.

The OP told us they had secured quotes from builders.

Yes, the vendor may pull out. That would seem an unusual manoeuvre though given all you'd be doing is asking for a reduction rather than demanding one.

If the EA description said the house was priced for modernisation or something equivalent then maybe that weakens your position, but if not there's no harm in it.

Essentially the moral here is you don't ask you don't get. The vendor may be after a quick sell or be happy enough to reduce given that they got an offer over their asking price anyway.

There is no harm in asking - there's grounds for it through the survey and it isn't an unreasonable request. Only the OP and vendor however can decide how to proceed after that where there are no right or wrong answers.

firebubble

I'm watching this thread with interest as I think the property I'm hoping to buy has damp, so waiting to see the extent of it when I get the survey.
I think it's fine to ask for a price reduction on the assumption the property isn't being sold as an obvious restoration project (if so, 12k is neither here nor there when everything else will be done anyway), and that the things highlighted in the surveyors report which you're going to quibble are things which go to the soundness of the structure. So for example, adding a bit of insulation doesn't affect the structure and is more a nice to have (is there any house out there which is fully insulated to the latest modern standard?!), whereas subsidence or an illegal extension (for example) are issues which have to be rectified, so it comes down to who should cover the cost of sorting it out.  

benson1980

I’d ask for the whole lot off. You have the evidence in the quotes you have. If it is put forward in an objective non threatening manner, simply pointing out additional costs beyond wear and tear and usual renovations that could reasonably be expected, there’s no reason why the vendor would immediately flip a lid and pull out. They can only say no, or provide a counter offer which may be at the level you are initially thinking of anyway.
We’ve recently done similar and got the whole lot off. A written quote was key to this, plus our view that we could not have reasonably foreseen the repair when offering.

Crashy_Time

AdrianC said:

StandingInTheSun said:

Welcome to MSE where apparently asking for a reduction after a survey is akin to murdering someone.

Nobody has said that.

If we're doing reductio-ad-absurdum, then is it not similarly ridiculous to say "But the survey listed £50k of things that need doing, ergo I want £50k off"? When the property was clearly a project in the first place...?

In a price bubble most houses are overpriced, "projects" or not, getting 50k or 100k off at the start can save you a lot later on, especially if mortgage rates are moving higher.

MobileSaver

Crashy_Time said:

AdrianC said:

If we're doing reductio-ad-absurdum, then is it not similarly ridiculous to say "But the survey listed £50k of things that need doing, ergo I want £50k off"? When the property was clearly a project in the first place...?

  especially if mortgage rates are moving higher.

I asked you this last week but you didn't answer... do you think mortgage rates will move significantly higher any time this year?

lookstraightahead

If everyone asked for money off based on a survey, then I would be putting this 'on' the price to start with. Unless it's something major that couldn't be seen. 

caprikid1

MobileSaver said:

Crashy_Time said:

AdrianC said:

If we're doing reductio-ad-absurdum, then is it not similarly ridiculous to say "But the survey listed £50k of things that need doing, ergo I want £50k off"? When the property was clearly a project in the first place...?

  especially if mortgage rates are moving higher.

I asked you this last week but you didn't answer... do you think mortgage rates will move significantly higher any time this year?

Not a chance of higher mortgage rates this year, the government needs people to spend to get the economy moving and paying tax. There is no way of a base rate rise this year.

Crashy_Time

MobileSaver said:

Crashy_Time said:

AdrianC said:

If we're doing reductio-ad-absurdum, then is it not similarly ridiculous to say "But the survey listed £50k of things that need doing, ergo I want £50k off"? When the property was clearly a project in the first place...?

  especially if mortgage rates are moving higher.

I asked you this last week but you didn't answer... do you think mortgage rates will move significantly higher any time this year?

My general view is that the inflation the PTB obviously now desperately want/need to counteract the massive deflationary shock from Covid could prove hard to sustain (they have been trying since 2008 let`s not forget?) but if the US Ten Year spikes in an "uncontrolled" fashion there is very little the BOE will be able to do to control the inevitable trajectory of mortgage rates, but more specifically there is no one on the planet who can definitely predict future bond rates IMO, so why would you expect me to be able to? My question to you would be - Why do you keep saying that the effects of rising bond yields on the property market can be controlled by mortgage debt holders fixing their re-payment rate when this is obviously untrue?