Reduction in offer price for House

When you reduce your offer by 2%, the sellers snap your hands off, your purchase completes, and 6 months later you're staring at ruined, chased-out walls (rewiring), leak damage (from boiler replacement/roof work), and having to live with limited access to toilet/kitchen/showers as they get replaced etc... you'll regret wanting to be 'nice' at the time of purchase. Ask me how I know...

So you just revise your offer based on the information in the survey.

You're still making this into a bigger issue than it needs to be.

If you want the house, revise your offer or don't.

Crikey, I wouldn't blame you for a second for requesting a reduction in price!

I would look at that carefully.

Small budget and renovation aren’t too phrases that go well together but someone’s idea of small to another’s it’s hard to say.

As a rough guide we are 3 years into a renovation: midlands, 2500sqft detached, no roofs or ground flooring needed redoing, but everything else yes.

We are probably at 100k already; that’s mates rates, mid range finish, a lot of shopping around and waiting for sales and 90% of the house is now at decorating level (so basic white walls and when most people start their house updates ie. Decorating, furniture, lighting fixtures, window dressings, shelves etc).

So to get a 3 bed semi 1500-1800 sqft to a habitable state when you start ripping walls apart; you’re probably looking minimum 50k+ and that won’t be fast or one contractor.

Also meant to add you don't need to prove you've been lied to or mis-led to reduce your offer though. Hope you get a better price if you decide to carry on with the purchase.

My understanding of that story was that the seller knew of the moths as he'd had a survey done. I read it as hanging on whether moths constituted 'vermin' or not. He reported no known vermin.

If you were told not to turn on the electrics then surely common sense would tell you that there was a problem. You didn't need it in writing from an estate agent. If the sockets/plugs/switches are not modern ones then it's highly unlikely to be alright. If there is no certification for recent work then you should also assume you'll be redoing it.

If you are buying a probate house and it has obviously not had any work done in many years surely it's sensible to assume everything needs doing and budget, or offer, accordingly.

OP, have you had a drains test done? Drains can cause a LOT of inconvenience and expense if they are damaged and need to be replaced.

Have you run all of the taps in the property, and flushed the toilets? If not, go back and do this, so that you know what you are getting into.

As an ex estate agent, I am appalled that you weren't told about the dodgy electrics. However, you do sound a tad naive, is this the first time you've done a renovation? My advice to you, would be to go through the survey you've had done with a highlighter, and mark everything which has been pointed out as being a problem. Then, get builders in to quote for the necessary works. If the property has been priced with a view to the work that may need doing, then take that into consideration, ie, if the property fully done up would normally be marketed in your area for £500k, but due to the obvious work needed, it's being marketed at £450k, then they've already made a good allowance. However, as you were led to believe the the electrics were OK, then definitely ask for the whole cost of rewiring.

Are you an experienced DIY'er? If not, be prepared that this house is going to cost you a LOT of money to get into good shape by the sound of things, and it doesn't sound like you have a massive budget. Has the survey down valued the property at all? If so, then you need to ask for the price to be reduced to the valuation given by the surveyor.

So basically, do your homework, and then send the agent an email with a revised offer, stating why it has been revised, ie, we've revised our offer based on the fact that we've now had a survey done, and it has brought to our attention that the property needs a full rewire, cost of which will be ..., etc., etc., and then be prepared to walk away.

Finally, being NICE when buying and selling a house is foolish, does your partner really think that the Vendor will be nice when reviewing your amended offer? Of course not, they will want every penny they can get, and in turn, every penny you save on the purchase will be needed to put toward the renovations, so tell him to stop being nice, and start thinking with his wallet!

I mean, if it's very dated and needs work then I would automatically assume it needs a full rewire? Ours hadn't been done since it was built in 1955, they wouldn't let us turn on the lights due to insurance or something and it was the first job we did when we moved in. It didn't put me off the house we just expected it. Ours was priced as a project in comparison to the fully done houses in the area.

You could make a reduced offer, and walk away if it's not agreed. On the other hand, if this has all come up in the survey there's bound to be more to deal with that hasn't been picked up. So it would have to be a really good reduction, with a contingency included, or I'd look elsewhere.

I would walk away too. There could be more things wrong with it than the survey has found. We are on our third house and every one something has been uncovered once we started renovating some bloody dangerous!

We found a property that needed a lot of work. It had been on the market previously but the chain collapsed a week before exchange. We were outbid which was disappointing but a few months later it came back on the market with an asking price over £100k less that our rejected offer. I can only think that the second buyers survey found something significantly wrong with the property and we consider ourselves to have had a lucky escape.

This.
Renovation to me means electrics boiler kitchen bathroom

Another vote for walk away.

You don't need to ask for a reduction.
You contact the estate agent a d say that due to the work required you are reducing your offer by xxx.
This is then accepted or they will counter

It's usual to reduce offer by cost of work plus a bit extra for inconvenience which also gives room for negotiation.

You do need to be prepared to walk away.

Yes so this. Then if necessary negotiate down to 65% if you think it is worse it

'Renovation' to me means the place needs gutting, if the estate agent said the property needs renovating then I would view on the assumption that everything would need replacing.
If they say things like the house is dated it usually means more of a cosmetic overhaul.
Just something to think about if you go to more viewings.

It is very common to reduce an offer after a survey and as those defects sound very substantial and you didn't know about them when you put you offer in. I think it would be fair if your offer was a lot smaller than your original one if you still want the house as those issues will be expensive to sort out. Wbey house I have bought has said the roof needs replacing because I have bought old houses and they have been fine for years but you will have to sort the electrics and plumbing immediately.

My advice would be to walk away from this. It's a nightmare and you don't have the money or the experience either to negotiate a price or to cope with whatever else you are going to find.

If you do choose to stick with it despite the agent's lies and the dangerous condition of the property, you need to switch your mentality completely, from novice buyer partner's 'nice' and your anxious supplicant stance of whether to 'ask' for a minimal reduction to hard headed tough customer who knows the reality that this place is a money pit, probably even more than you know about already, a headache for the agent and owner and that they need someone to take it off their hands for whatever they can get, preferably someone soft who makes the most common inexperienced timid buyer's mistake of offering too much.

You hold the cards and need to play them hard; firmly state your demand for a massive reduction, that it is not worth more, would cost a fortune to repair and update at today's building / materials and tradesmen's prices and that you couldn't possibly risk shelling out more than it would take to put it right, even with the things you know about, which they have already lied to you about, never mind the unknown other things you may find - or you will walk away.

Leave your offer on the table and see what happens. Whatever you do, do not settle for nibbling around the edges of a reduction because it would feel impolite to be hard and pushy for a more realistic and necessary risk-avoiding reduction.

Walk Away.

I just think knowingly withholding pertinent information that has the potential to cause a fire isn’t right.

I'm not sure how the seller/EA can be expected to know it's likely to cause a fire unless they're a qualified electrician. You can look at a fusebox as a lay person and recognise that it's an old style one (use google lens on your phone to get an estimate of it's age) and that indicates the electrics are likely to need attention. I've been told plenty of BS by so called 'expert' tradesmen over the years, so I would take any previous reports done with a grain of salt if I've never been in contact with the person carrying them out. Unless they've told you the house was rewired last year or something like that?

I read the bit that said it was old and needed renovation, plus that someone old had been living there and assumed it was a wreck. Wiring need replacing every 25 years, boilers 10-15, windows 20 years ish so I do think unless it’s less then 25 years old or has been well looked after or recently renovated you’ll need to expect all this to be done.

The EA is full of shit though, I’ll give you that.

Give negotiation a go. The family will be looking to shift it. Is it priced fairly? Housing market is slow so you can definitely try.

It’s not a bungalow in East Riding of Yorkshire is it?

Plenty of people reduce their offer when a full survey has been done. That's completely normal. The person selling can then decide whether to accept the offer or not.
You need to reduce your offer by 100% of the costs to remedy everything that is wrong with it and bear in mind that there will likely be a lot of extra costs on top of that.
If you don't have a lot of money for renovations you would be better off pulling out of this altogether.
Dropping the offer by only 1% doesn't sound enough for everything that is wrong with it.
I think you sound too nice/too unsure of yourself and you could end up with a lot of financial problems trying to bring this place up to a habitable standard.