Is this a reasonable request?

[christinarossetti]

Hi all,

Picking your uber brains again....

We're just about to exchange on a house (hurrah!). The survey indicated that the electrics need some attention - it's a 1920s house so I'm thinking complete rewiring is possibly needed.

When our solicitor submitted 'pre-contract queries' based on our survey/searches etc, I asked him to ask the vendor's solicitor to ask the vendor if we could appoint an electrician to do an assessment/test after exchange but before completion so that we can work out if we need to put stuff in storage/live somewhere else for a few weeks etc.

Got the 'responses to queries' back and the solicitor hasn't addressed this point. I've e-mailed asking him to but haven't received a response yet.

Is this a reasonable request or something that people usually do? Obviously, if our vendor says 'no' it won't stop us exchanging, but I'd sort of really like to know the extent of what we have to do as early as possible.

TIA

[KirstyJC]

Sounds reasonable to me. I went round to the house we bought between exchange and completion to measure up to check our furniture would fit and neither the estate agent nor the vendor (who let me in) seemed to think it odd.

Can you just deal with the question via the Estate agent instead of the solicitors? Would be quicker.

[Phantomquartz]

We had exactly the same when we bought our 1920s house and got an electrician in. We actually ended up deducting the the cost of the work from the purchase price as the wiring was so old and badly done.

[christinarossetti]

Thanks. Yes, I was just thinking that the EA might be a better bet.