Underpinned House - Longmore Avenue, Southampton

JC2122

Hi all,

We need some advice on a property purchase we are halfway through.

We viewed a property in Longmore Avenue, Woolston, Southampton (the property is still on the market today) in April 2021, and made an offer on the property that day.

2 months into the conveyancing process we were advised on the PIF that the property has been underpinned. Fast forward 3-4 weeks, it turns out the house had suffered severe subsidence approx. 30 years ago and the seller finally provided partial paperwork to advise what had been done. 

The underpinning was substantial and as such we have revised the offer down approx 5% from full asking price taking into account other issues the survey has found such as damp and electrical and gas safety.

We have also found the property is expensive to insure due to its history, quoted coming back nearly 10 times what a normal quote would be for a house that didn’t have subsidence issues.

The seller has rejected the offer, and apparently wont move from the full asking price which is the midway valuation on Zoopla. The property is now back on the market, increased £25K yesterday and was dropped back down by £25K that same evening so the estate agent can claim it has been discounted to attract more attention.

Are we being fair, and should we even still be considering such a property?

Any advice would be appreciated as this is our first property, we have no chain and we can exchange and complete within a few weeks if the revised offer is accepted.

TIA

SameOldRoundabout

I think your updated offer is unreasonable. Assuming the survey found no ongoing movement I don’t think the underpinning matters at all. Nor do gas and electric safety, which every survey ever will mention. As a seller I’d be furious if you tried taking away £20k or so after all this time because of work done 30 years ago!

Bluebell1000

While the house probably is stable if your surveyor hasn't seen any ongoing issues, the increased insurance cost and fact that it may well put prospective buyers off in future would be enough for me to think it was worth less (to me) than a house that hadn't had any previous subsidence. Especially when the documentation for works is incomplete.  

In the survey, did they value it at asking price? If so then you may have less of an argument for a price reduction, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to ask if the history wasn't disclosed in advance of your offer. 

If the seller won't budge on price, are you prepared to walk away? If not ( and perhaps best not to answer that here in case the poster above is the seller ) then really you have no other choice other than to accept what they are asking - if you still would like it but might walk away then you could give an ultimatum - accept the new price or you withdraw - but you need to be confident you'd walk away if they still say no. If there are other houses that you might consider, then perhaps have a look at other options?

tooldle

I’ve previously owned a house that had been underpinned a year or so prior to our purchase. We found the existing insurer to be our only option. Once the works had passed 5 years the full market was open to us at competitive rates. Were you clear with the insurer about how far in the past the underpinning took place? 
To be fair to the vendor, a house underpinned 30 years ago with no ongoing movement, does not have subsidence issues. If the entirety of the ground floor has been underpinned the house is extremely unlikely to experience any further issues.

JC2122

Thanks for the replies.

It’s not necessary just the underpinning that we are concerned with, the property needs other remedial work to make it safe from a gas and electric perspective, and outside main wall work, including damp investigation along the same wall that was underpinned. There are other elements of the survey that mean more money being spent so the revised offer we thought would be fair considering none of this was obvious when we made the original offer. 

We feel it’s unfair of the EA and seller not to mention the subsidence and underpinning when the property was listed and at the viewing regardless of age, and this has caused us additional stress and to actually originally reconsider the purchase at such a late stage. 

Underpinned property has a stigma attached to it and we are fully aware that this will be something we will need to go through ourselves if we ever do sell at a later stage, either short term or long term.

We have made the ultimatum of accepting the revised offer or walking away as we feel it’s just not worth what we originally offered in the hindsight we now have from the PIF and survey results. 

It seems the seller wants to try and find another buyer to pay full asking price and to find a new chain, which we think will be a challenge in the current market especially with SDLT coming to an end 1st October.

We were never looking to try our luck with a chance offer at late stages, the revised offer went in a few days after we had all of the available paperwork back on the underpinning and questions answered to the best of the sellers ability.

[Deleted User]

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fiveacre

What work is required to make it safe from a gas and electric perspective?

tooldle

You say ‘damp investigation ‘ so as things stand there is no certainty on whether or not there is an issue, is that correct? Is it a 1930’s ish house? Electrical wise i am guessing an installation not meeting current standards, so functional but more than a couple of years since it was installed? 
I really don’t understand the ‘stigma’ comment. Every underpin i have ever seen involves digging down and pouring tonnes and tonnes of concrete. The house effectively sits on a concrete raft and is going nowhere. You’d need a catastrophic event to cause an issue. Do you know why it was underpinned?
i’m originally from the city to the east of you, and had always understood the whole area to be something of a hotspot for subsidence.

tdawber

My two penneth, I think if it’s causing you agro, it will cause agro in the future so I would walk away. 

arrows123

I have some experience in this. Bought a house (owned by an estate agent!) which 18 months down the line was found to have heave (opposite to subsidence) due to a neighbouring oak tree. We are convinced they knew there were issues as after moving in found some evidence of covering up cracks etc. The house was still in the NHBC guarantee which covered the cost of the underpinning thankfully. 

Managed to sell the house 8/9 years after the underpinning work had been done, the work had no guarantee as it only lasted to cover the rest of the NHBC which had run out. Was panicking about anyone ever wanting to buy it, but it sold fine. We were upfront with the estate agent and wanted them to ensure any buyers didn’t feel duped by disclosing it too late as we had felt duped when we bought. The new buyers didn’t even get a full or house buyers survey! 

Did a lot of research about insurance, we had stayed with our original insurers as this seemed the easiest but there are quite a few insurers out there who would consider 30years as long enough for anything to have shown up. 

If it’s an area where subsidence is more common having a house that’s already been underpinned should actually be a positive. The other issues aside which I have no experience of I guess it depends on your situation.. is this a home you really love? Likely to stay for years and years? Has it sold within the last 30 years if so how many times will give an indication of if there have been problems with other buyers? Maybe do some research about insurance costs? Off the top of my head legal and general I think were one of the ones where anything over 10yrs they discounted- it may have changed. 

If you’re the type of person to worry about things I will add that it did cause a lot of stress before even selling about what would happen when we needed to sell, which thankfully was actually unfounded in our case! 

Kazzam1984

tooldle said:

You say ‘damp investigation ‘ so as things stand there is no certainty on whether or not there is an issue, is that correct? Is it a 1930’s ish house? Electrical wise i am guessing an installation not meeting current standards, so functional but more than a couple of years since it was installed? 
I really don’t understand the ‘stigma’ comment. Every underpin i have ever seen involves digging down and pouring tonnes and tonnes of concrete. The house effectively sits on a concrete raft and is going nowhere. You’d need a catastrophic event to cause an issue. Do you know why it was underpinned?
i’m originally from the city to the east of you, and had always understood the whole area to be something of a hotspot for subsidence.

I'm from Bournemouth,  I think the South Coast is all sand. So many houses which have been underpinned because of sandy soil !