Seller wants to complete before my homebuyer survey is done

ritz55

The other option would be to agree a completion date before the end of the stamp duty holiday ends but not exchange. On the day exchange and complete together. I assume this would then give you the time needed to get the survey done and get it reviewed. Can't blame the seller either as £10k is a lot to be loosing

pluto261

On the one hand you should never buy a house without a survey. On the other hand, you definitely should have had a survey done already. I booked my survey the day after my offer was accepted, at the same time as instructing the solicitor to start on searches and putting in the mortgage application. Things are very busy right now so the earliest date I could get for the survey was three weeks away.

Best I can suggest is to ask the surveyors who are fully booked to call you as soon as they get any cancellations, so you can maybe slot your survey in earlier. And keep phoning around to see if anyone has dates available.

saajan_12

DavidBrentsLifeCoach said:

Hi, I am purchasing a 1 bed ground floor maisonette. The seller, understandably, wants to take advantage of the stamp duty holiday. Exchange date is set for next week already but  I haven't been able to find a surveyor that can do a homebuyer survey before then. - Exchange date is suggested. Its only set when all of the chain agrees including you 
(Broker was late getting the mortgage offer and the searches weren't straightforward either) - so? you could have arranged the survey to happen at the same time as the mortgage application / searches. If you chose to go one at a time to save abortive costs, thats on you. 
Bottom line is that I will have to exchange and complete without a homebuyer's survey, which I feel worried about. OTOH the property (about 100 years old) was last sold in 2016 so I am assuming its condition hasn't deteriorated drastically since then. The seller has also done some refurb (floor insulation, new kitchen etc). - this is the key question, are you happy (well willing) to go ahead based on what you can see and the mortgage valuation? 

I feel it's unwise to proceed without having a survey done, but if I put my foot down and say I want to wait for a survey, the seller may need to pay an extra £10k in stamp duty, but then they couldn't afford to move (according to the agent - he was rather aggressive about it, and made me freak out tbh as if it were my fault). - well it is your fault for not arranging it earlier. However you are where you are. If they can't afford the stamp duty, then you won't be moving after the deadline either (unless you pay for the stamp duty)
Any thoughts please? How would you proceed? TIA 

I agree with them, you had plenty of time to arrange a survey in parallel, while mortagge application and searches were going through. The only reason not to is to save abortive costs ie avoid paying for survey if mortage / searches have issues. For the sake of a few £x00 for a wasted survey, the seller and everyone else in the chain could incur £x0,000 in stamp duty. 

Your choice is 
a) insist on survey,
- if done before 30 June, you could exchange & complete on same day (in theory).
- if done after this takes past 30 June, then everything could get renegotiated, particularly if people across the chain can't afford the extra SDLT and with no deadline, you may lose the house 

b) agree to go ahead without survey, and rely on mortgage valuation / what you can see. 
- weigh up potential cost of repairs that a survey might flag up with the cost of starting again with a new property if everything is renegotiated (extra rent / searches / mortgage application etc)

pinkshoes

Perhaps the OP was using a mortgage broker because there was a possibility he would not be able to get a mortgage for whatever reason (poor credit, CCJ, irregular earnings etc...) so it would not have been wise to spend money on a survey until he was sure that the mortgage was obtainable. A mortgage broker would not advise a customer to spend money on a purchase until they were sure they could offer them a mortgage, otherwise the would get a lot of backlash!!

The chain will have to wait. Or you could try a surveyor from further afield and offer to pay travel expenses?

DavidBrentsLifeCoach

Thanks all for comments. I managed to find a survey for next week. But now it turns out that there are problems further up the chain ... seller's seller needs to complete 14 days ahead of the stamp duty deadline, by order of their lender (can't say I understand this, but it's what the agent told me ... whatever, I have to accept this). Now it looks like the sale can't go ahead when planned. Nothing to do with a survey I might or might not have. Which makes me feel relieved, in a way. 
So the seller's seller (chain of 3 ) may need to pull out.  I am willing to wait longer for the property, as long as the survey comes back ok. 

m0bov

I'd just get a survey booked, sounds like its going to collapse anyway.