Homebuyers survey and stress levels!

RM_2013

tacpot12 said:

You could look into Cognative Behavioural Therapy to help with your worry and overthinking, but I'm inclined to think that you need to remind yourself that there is no point in worrying about things that are not yet a problem. Save your energy for the things that ARE a problem. Remind yourself that you will need energy to deal with the real problems, so you should not be wasting energy on things that are not a problem. Tell yourself this when you catch yourself worrying about what might be and you'll be ok.

There is a bit of skill involved in understand what problems reported in a survey really are problems that need dealing with immediately (very few do), and which should be dealt with over a longer period. Damp is generally something that needs dealing with immediately because you don't know how long it has been going on for, so you need to jump on the problem, but most other problems will wait. 

Appreciate you reply and you’re right the overthinking needs to stop!! 

We are quite prepared to try and resolve things as much as possible but guess some things may well be out of our control!! 

MrCarrot

RM_2013 said: Appreciate you reply and you’re right the overthinking needs to stop!! 

We are quite prepared to try and resolve things as much as possible but guess some things may well be out of our control!! 

Same issue here.  I overthink everything, I try and second guess everything, and think of every single thing that could possibly go wrong.  Our own transaction is taking an age and I have been driving myself nuts these last few weeks.  The main issue for me is that nothing appears to be happening.  I have come up with a saying now, which is, "That will hopefully be done next week" which is basically the reply we get to every single thing that we are waiting on.  And just like tomorrow never comes, it seems like next week never comes either.  But I know I just need to relax, because I have virtually no control over the process.

Gavin83

I won't quite say the survey is irrelevant (as it's not) but ultimately it doesn't have nearly as much bearing on this as the buyers themselves. After all, despite what the survey says it's up to the buyers what they do with that information. You could have a relatively bad survey and the buyers decide they like the house enough they won't adjust their offer. You could have a perfect survey and the buyers still decide they've overpaid and reduce their offer. We've had a number of threads on here from buyers asking if they should reduce their offer because they think house prices might drop. It happens, people are often unpredictable. Certainly don't show any signs of desperation though, some would take advantage of that.

While I wouldn't worry about something that hasn't occurred yet I do think it's worth briefly considering what your options might be should they reduce their offer or pull out entirely. It's not a bad thing to be prepared.

RM_2013

MrCarrot said:

RM_2013 said: Appreciate you reply and you’re right the overthinking needs to stop!! 

We are quite prepared to try and resolve things as much as possible but guess some things may well be out of our control!! 

Same issue here.  I overthink everything, I try and second guess everything, and think of every single thing that could possibly go wrong.  Our own transaction is taking an age and I have been driving myself nuts these last few weeks.  The main issue for me is that nothing appears to be happening.  I have come up with a saying now, which is, "That will hopefully be done next week" which is basically the reply we get to every single thing that we are waiting on.  And just like tomorrow never comes, it seems like next week never comes either.  But I know I just need to relax, because I have virtually no control over the process.

Good luck with your transaction. It’s so stressful.  If this all goes to plan I vow to never move again 🤣

RM_2013

Gavin83 said:

I won't quite say the survey is irrelevant (as it's not) but ultimately it doesn't have nearly as much bearing on this as the buyers themselves. After all, despite what the survey says it's up to the buyers what they do with that information. You could have a relatively bad survey and the buyers decide they like the house enough they won't adjust their offer. You could have a perfect survey and the buyers still decide they've overpaid and reduce their offer. We've had a number of threads on here from buyers asking if they should reduce their offer because they think house prices might drop. It happens, people are often unpredictable. Certainly don't show any signs of desperation though, some would take advantage of that.

While I wouldn't worry about something that hasn't occurred yet I do think it's worth briefly considering what your options might be should they reduce their offer or pull out entirely. It's not a bad thing to be prepared.

Yes you’re right.  I can’t predict how they will react to the survey good or bad.  We’ve already had a buyer pull out although relatively early in the process as their personal circumstances changed so this is our 2nd buyer.  Anything can happen!
as it is we’ve found that the vendors who we are buying from haven’t even found a house they want to buy yet so nothing is going to move very quickly.
if our seller pulls out we will just re-market as we sold again within a day of the previous buyer pulling out but if the report reveals serious issues then I guess we will know what we have to address. 

Thanks for your reply

Chemistry777

I agree a lot depends on the buyer.  FTB's by definition are inexperienced and may have unrealistic expectation that a survey will produce nothing.   We just got the results of a level 2 survey and we were initially shocked at what came back. 

However, after reflection and some analysis, we found a lot of items were immaterial, minor to fix (low cost) or things that are pretty much flagged on all surveys (electrics, gas, drains, etc).  We still have a couple of major issues that we are taking up with the vendor (i.e. structural stuff) but it looks like you have non of that and I hope you have buyers that can see through the "noise" of a survey.

RM_2013

Chemistry777 said:

I agree a lot depends on the buyer.  FTB's by definition are inexperienced and may have unrealistic expectation that a survey will produce nothing.   We just got the results of a level 2 survey and we were initially shocked at what came back. 

However, after reflection and some analysis, we found a lot of items were immaterial, minor to fix (low cost) or things that are pretty much flagged on all surveys (electrics, gas, drains, etc).  We still have a couple of major issues that we are taking up with the vendor (i.e. structural stuff) but it looks like you have non of that and I hope you have buyers that can see through the "noise" of a survey.

I agree and I think if I was a FTB that had received a huge list of “issues” on a survey I probably would panic too but being older and wiser helps! 

Good luck with your survey.  Out of interest did you decide to renegotiate price with the vendors with any of the issues flagged? 

Chemistry777

Hi RM_2013, We had two issues we were concerned about from the homebuyers but knew we needed a structural survey to find out more about these faults and the likely cost to resolve.  We spoke to the Vendor via the EA and said we want to undertake a more detailed survey but did not want to pay for this unless the seller was willing to flexible on the asking price if significant cost items were found.  We said we would be open and share the report findings.   They have agreed so we now await the findings. 

Hopefully nothing major comes up and we can move forward on the agreed price, but if something costly comes up, we needed to be able to negotiate as we do not have the money to cover these items.  We do have a small post of money but this is accounted for with the other things in the survey and the items we knew ourselves that would need doing.  Hope this makes sense and I have explained myself.

RM_2013

Chemistry777 said:

Hi RM_2013, We had two issues we were concerned about from the homebuyers but knew we needed a structural survey to find out more about these faults and the likely cost to resolve.  We spoke to the Vendor via the EA and said we want to undertake a more detailed survey but did not want to pay for this unless the seller was willing to flexible on the asking price if significant cost items were found.  We said we would be open and share the report findings.   They have agreed so we now await the findings. 

Hopefully nothing major comes up and we can move forward on the agreed price, but if something costly comes up, we needed to be able to negotiate as we do not have the money to cover these items.  We do have a small post of money but this is accounted for with the other things in the survey and the items we knew ourselves that would need doing.  Hope this makes sense and I have explained myself.

That makes complete sense and sounds sensible and reasonable.  Fingers crossed nothing major crops up and you can carry on with your purchase - good luck 

EndlessStruggle

I was a FTB and my survey by a one man band surveyor was pretty colourful.

Lots of orange and red.

All very resolvable when considered and didn't put me off.

Some things weren't as bad as he made out after being looked at by the relevant tradesmen.

Cost 1/3 of what they estimated to resolve.