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Buying a house with water leaks/damp
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Cola133
Posts: 52 Forumite
We're in the process of buying a property. We put in an offer on 13th August, 10k below asking price of £250k as the area will be having a massive development starting in 2025 and lots of properties are for sale as its currently a village and it's going to be a town - lots of people moving out and property prices falling quickly. We are willing to put up with the noise and dust as it gets us a house which we wouldn't have got, if the development wasn't going ahead.
The offer was accepted 14th August, with this statement "As the sale is not binding at this stage, we will continue to market the property for a reserve list only until a valuation/survey has been instructed by your mortgage lender. Once this has been carried out the property will be regarded as Sold Subject to Contract and we will write to your solicitor and to the vendors’ solicitor asking them to commence the legal work".
We received our Mortgage Agreed statement on 21st August and my family were told yesterday at their viewing, that they were still showing people around the property even last weekend!
When we viewed initially we noticed peeling plaster above 2 windows, 1 downstairs in a bay window with a flat roof, the 2nd in an upstairs bedroom, but it didn't seem too, too bad. We put in our offer of £240k which was accepted. The 2nd viewing (1.5 weeks later) we took a builder, he found that the flat roof in the lounge had a tear in the roof felt and couldn't pinpoint the source of the upstairs bedroom without doing further investigations in the loft which he couldn't do at a viewing. There is also a hairline crack above the main bedroom window.
My family visited today (1.5 weeks later from my last viewing) and from their photos, the damp has got much worse due to the heavy rain, and is now growing mold.
The seller and us are both chain free, but even if our solicitor moves at the speed of light, we are still looking at a minimum of 8 weeks, ideally we were looking for a completion date in December to meet our needs, but we can move quicker if needed.
The problem is that we are going into Autumn and the wet rainy season, so even if our Solicitor can complete searches and everything quickly, then we are still looking at a lot of time for the problem to deteriorate even further due to the weather.
The sellers Estate Agent told me a few days ago that they have had another offer put in that was higher than ours, but that 'the sellers wanted to be loyal to us and the other people were in a chain and we're not'. I'm now assuming that the sellers want someone to move in quickly as they know the damp/leak is just going to get worse going into Autumn - but no one can move that quickly, legalities take time and there is no short cut!
Our Surveyor is booked for a RICS Level3 on 4th September, but I don't want to waste £1k on a property survey that we may have to walk away from as the the sellers are not fixing the water leak/damp problems.
We love the house, but I don't know what to do at this point. The seller is going to say we dropped them £10k that will cover the damp/leak, but we dropped them due to the development. We're on a very tight budget and could just about afford to get the problem fixed now, but goodness knows what condition in 3 months time it will be in, after a wet Autumn, if its deteriorated a lot after just 1 short spell of heavy rain.
What can be done, are there any solutions to this? I don't want to walk away unless I absolutely have to, but at the same time if the sellers don't get the repair fixed now, we could be signing up to a disaster in 3 months time
The offer was accepted 14th August, with this statement "As the sale is not binding at this stage, we will continue to market the property for a reserve list only until a valuation/survey has been instructed by your mortgage lender. Once this has been carried out the property will be regarded as Sold Subject to Contract and we will write to your solicitor and to the vendors’ solicitor asking them to commence the legal work".
We received our Mortgage Agreed statement on 21st August and my family were told yesterday at their viewing, that they were still showing people around the property even last weekend!
When we viewed initially we noticed peeling plaster above 2 windows, 1 downstairs in a bay window with a flat roof, the 2nd in an upstairs bedroom, but it didn't seem too, too bad. We put in our offer of £240k which was accepted. The 2nd viewing (1.5 weeks later) we took a builder, he found that the flat roof in the lounge had a tear in the roof felt and couldn't pinpoint the source of the upstairs bedroom without doing further investigations in the loft which he couldn't do at a viewing. There is also a hairline crack above the main bedroom window.
My family visited today (1.5 weeks later from my last viewing) and from their photos, the damp has got much worse due to the heavy rain, and is now growing mold.
The seller and us are both chain free, but even if our solicitor moves at the speed of light, we are still looking at a minimum of 8 weeks, ideally we were looking for a completion date in December to meet our needs, but we can move quicker if needed.
The problem is that we are going into Autumn and the wet rainy season, so even if our Solicitor can complete searches and everything quickly, then we are still looking at a lot of time for the problem to deteriorate even further due to the weather.
The sellers Estate Agent told me a few days ago that they have had another offer put in that was higher than ours, but that 'the sellers wanted to be loyal to us and the other people were in a chain and we're not'. I'm now assuming that the sellers want someone to move in quickly as they know the damp/leak is just going to get worse going into Autumn - but no one can move that quickly, legalities take time and there is no short cut!
Our Surveyor is booked for a RICS Level3 on 4th September, but I don't want to waste £1k on a property survey that we may have to walk away from as the the sellers are not fixing the water leak/damp problems.
We love the house, but I don't know what to do at this point. The seller is going to say we dropped them £10k that will cover the damp/leak, but we dropped them due to the development. We're on a very tight budget and could just about afford to get the problem fixed now, but goodness knows what condition in 3 months time it will be in, after a wet Autumn, if its deteriorated a lot after just 1 short spell of heavy rain.
What can be done, are there any solutions to this? I don't want to walk away unless I absolutely have to, but at the same time if the sellers don't get the repair fixed now, we could be signing up to a disaster in 3 months time
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Ask that the damp is to be rectified is put into the contract of sale?4.29kWp Solar system, 45/55 South/West split in cloudy rainy Cumbria.1
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