Buyers surveyor undervalued our house

BikingBud

RocketRonnieRadox said:

Asimovs_nightfall said:

I think you may have to try and remove the emotion from this, whether the surveyor is good or not and whether the survey helps or hinders, and think about it as a transaction only.  How much do you want to get it off your hands?

It seems you're in the fortunate position of not having to sell to live elsewhere. You may well have this house on your hands for a further six months, plus time it takes to go through the legals. How much is that worth? You may have to sell for £250k to get that sale.  Then again, it may not sell for another 15 months!  How long are you willing to sit on this asset without the liquidity of the cash?

All ifs and buts, but something I experienced and was glad to sell in the end at a reduced rate to move on with my life.

I agree with you in principle and I do want to move on with my life however £23,000 is a kitchen in my new house which needs a significant spend on it.

As mentioned above I’m having a report done on the roof that will make the severe look like an incompetence surveyor and I’ve asked to proceed at 260. The agent rang the buyer to see if she’s considered this today but he didn’t answer the phone so the agent left a message and has not yet heard back let’s see

Buy a second hand kitchen for £1200-1500 install it move on!

If it nags you that much come back to it later.

ETA - I assume you have paid SDLT for purchasing an additional house. What is the sell by date to claim your SDLT back? How much might that lose you?

As I said before YOU have an impasse.

vic_sf49

As it's your 2nd property, what's it costing you for insurance, heating, other bills, council tax, especially if council tax is at a higher rate because of the 2nd property thing?

Add that up for the 15 months, and/or for another year, and see if the offer you've had sounds better? 

Unless your property is unique, and I'm thinking massive old farmhouse, which is very remote, and might only get one offer per year, then it usually comes down to being priced too high. 

pinkshoes

RocketRonnieRadox said:

Thanks all. Yes you have a point about it being on the market without an offer for 15 months but - overvalued by 30k ? Another house on the next block of the same construction went for £310k last year and ours is in better internal condition.

we have bought yes. Been paying 2 sets of bills for a year now but we are mortgage free on both houses.

I could stay in the current house and keep both houses running for another 2 to 6 months without an issue however during this period the new to us House will be deteriorating and condition with no heating and nobody living in it. 

This whole 15 months has been very stressful and in some ways completing on a sale will be a great relief but is 250,000 realistic evaluation 30,000 lower than the estate agent evaluation is quite a lot.

@RocketRonnieRadox - you need to take a reality check here.

The house is MORTGAGE FREE. In the last 15 months you will have paid potentially £3000 council tax (more if you are in an area which has double CT for empty properties), then I assume standing order for gas/elec and heating ticking over to prevent burst pipes and damp?

So given if you accept £250k this is CASH in your pocket, why are you holding onto this property? 

What did you actually pay for it?

Ectophile

RocketRonnieRadox said:

As mentioned above I’m having a report done on the roof that will make the severe look like an incompetence surveyor and I’ve asked to proceed at 260. The agent rang the buyer to see if she’s considered this today but he didn’t answer the phone so the agent left a message and has not yet heard back let’s see

As a rule, never take advice from someone else's expert.  That applies to lawyers, surveyors, financial advisers, etc.  The expert only has a duty of care to the person who pays them.  Nobody else.

So far as the buyer is concerned, you could be paying someone to deliver a report that says that everything about the house is perfect.  If that then turned out to be false, the buyer would have no legal claim against the your surveyor, since the buyer has no contract with them.

youth_leader

I do feel for you. 

I felt a huge sense of injustice with my buyer chip chip chip chipping away at the price, quoting the ridiculous sums his unpleasant L3 surveyor (264 sq m, took him six and a half hours of huffing and puffing, crap all over the guest room bed linen from the loft space.  He came into the kitchen and said 'can I have a wee?' - I was quite appalled.  Why he didn't just say I'd like to test the toilet?)  had quoted for repairs that were plain to the naked eye.  The buyer gave me the 'option' of repairing the roof - and the whole of the downstairs floorboards - and stated that if I did this work, totalling £50K, his mortgage lender would 'inspect my work' and if found 'satisfactory', they would lend him the additional money I sought.  No wonder I'm white haired now and still feel angry four years on.  I had been widowed for two years at that point, and felt very angry at how, as an older female, I was treated.   

Chief_of_Staffy

youth_leader said:

I do feel for you. 

I felt a huge sense of injustice with my buyer chip chip chip chipping away at the price, quoting the ridiculous sums his unpleasant L3 surveyor (264 sq m, took him six and a half hours of huffing and puffing, crap all over the guest room bed linen from the loft space.  He came into the kitchen and said 'can I have a wee?' - I was quite appalled.  Why he didn't just say I'd like to test the toilet?)  had quoted for repairs that were plain to the naked eye.  The buyer gave me the 'option' of repairing the roof - and the whole of the downstairs floorboards - and stated that if I did this work, totalling £50K, his mortgage lender would 'inspect my work' and if found 'satisfactory', they would lend him the additional money I sought.  No wonder I'm white haired now and still feel angry four years on.  I had been widowed for two years at that point, and felt very angry at how, as an older female, I was treated.   

Had a similar experience with the house I just sold. The buyer brought over a roofer who happened to be a 'good friend' of hers, and who proceeded to issue a stream of outright lies about the roof in order to get the buyer a big discount. He clearly thought that when he talked of the 'sagging ridge beam compromising the structure of the roof' I wouldn't know that my roof does not have a ridge-beam, and would go ahead and spend £20k on a replacement roof. I regret now lending him my ladder and torch to get into the loft in the first place, as the fact he didn't bring his own should have told me immediately he was a charlatan.

youth_leader

No regrets @Chief_of_Staffy - lending him your ladder and torch was the right thing to do as it proved his lack of professionalism.  Any professional prefers their own ladders as they know they are maintained well and safe.  I hope you are happy in your new home.  

Angelica123

I think the problem is that heart is winning over head here. It's possible that buyer's surveyor was incompetent but as a buyer it's sensible approach to trust your surveyor over your vendor. At least a surveyor is hopefully working in your best interest as a buyer. 

It's been on the market for 15months which is means it was on the market during the "beat the stamp duty change" madness. If £270k was genuinely a fair price then others would have at least offered before now. It's likely that the similar property that sold for 310k had selling points yours doesn't have. 

You aren't losing out of 23K if you accept 250k because the 273k is not real, not in any tangible sense. The real loss here is the opportunity cost and the cost to maintain an empty household. 

user1977

Unless I’ve missed something the OP still hasn’t explained why they think it’s worth more than £250k.

twopenny

I got messed around for months by buyers using what they thought was a way to bring an old lady to her knees. 
The information is on the internet for people to use.
But they got it wrong.
I told my estate agent who passed the message on that I was putting it back on the market, true, and suddenly they wanted a quick exchange.

Personally I'd wait it out as in a few short weeks it will be a new year and people will start looking again.
Meantime look at how appealing and homely it looks if it's empty.
Is it clean, is the garden tidy and appealing? Are colours neutral, fresh and clean?
Look at prices now. I've seen properties hang on the market as I'm looking and they are all priced at when the prices went wildly up and that time has gone. 


These are the things I've found - very steep shaded garden with decaying attempt at landscape and internal all old carpets, small, has steep garden with massive new greenhouse blocking the view, new conservatory but the steep garden behind and the soil hasn't been given a retaining wall, stickers all over kitchen, bedroom and bathroom which if removed would probably mean damaged surfaces.
The no window dark brown kitchen and dark brown cladding all across chimney and wall, why? What's under that?
These are all on at top dollar.

People are looking for a home without major projects unless it's a low price