Buyers dropping offer close to exchange- WWYD

[CaughtInTheCovid]

Hello,

For background we are in a short chain (our buyers, us, our vendors, empty house). Everything seems to be going ok and hoping to move before end of SDLT holiday at end of march.

Our buyers put in a much higher offer than our house was on for (they offered 395K it was on for 380K.) We did have 4 offers total but theirs was 6K more than the other highest but as they were proceedable we chose them.

Since then we have been in touch regularly they seem keen to do lots of work to the house. They are currently renting and rent ends late feb.

Ours is an old house (130 year) so the survey showed all the usual (maybe issues with roof, maybe damp, some windows failed) but nothing major. They had a damp person round (who told us £800 to fix one damp patch and damp proof the whole house) and a roofer (who told is there was a bit of mortar loss but otherwise roof was absolutely fine).

Since then they've decided they also want someone round to quote for all new windows and they've told the EA its provisionally come back at 10K for this. The survey just mentioned some failed panes not needing to replace windows entirely!

They have since said to the EA they are going to revise their offer. Its near the end, we need the SDLT holiday and we cant afford to take an offer much lower as we need the sale money to buy our new place. They've had a mortgage approved at their high offer price.

WWYD? Would you give them anything off? A small gesture to cover the damp and replace a couple of broken panes? They haven't told us how much they want off but I imagine it may be a fair bit.

Sorry its long!

We’ve just done what your buyer has done, but not lightly. We could see a lot of work was needed and so had a full buildings survey which came back last week. There was everything we anticipated plus significant damp, full rewire needed and other issues so we’ve dropped our offer by £10k. It’s the sellers prerogative whether they accept the revised offer or not but we won’t be increasing.

If the seller rejects it, this will leave us with nowhere to move to when the sale of our property goes through and we’ll lose £2k in fees. We’re not “trying it on” but we want to pay a fair price for the property which now further information has come to light our original offer isn’t.

This is everything that’s wrong with buying and selling in England and the whole process needs revising if you ask me.

We had a similar issue last year when buying. The survey threw up serious roof issues

We sought a quote for the work. The vendor did too and we managed to agree a new price between us. Nobody wants to break the chain but as a buyer you don't want to be ripped off either. We ended up paying the original asking price as had been in a bidding war to secure the property

It's fair enough to re-negotiate following a survey. Get your own quote for replacing the failed windows etc so you know whether they are taking the piss or not.

Thanks all for your advice!

For those saying they don’t want to pay over the odds I do get that. The impression I get is they offered high and would always have found a reason to go lower. All the properties we have bought have been old and surveys always raise potential damp and roof issues and these are often unfounded (like with ours- roof was fine). There is a patch of damp which of course we would offer money off for but to then ask for a window quote just seemed to us that they’re looking for a reason to take money off.

We will see anyway!

In case anyone is interested (I always like an update!) they asked for £7k off in the end- £900 to fix damp, £100 to fix roof and £6k to replace all the windows! We have agreed on £2k reduction (we offered £1000 off to pay to replace blown panes).

We are happy!

Well done op

Well done!

That's great!