House Buyer Morals

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A friend of mine bought a house earlier this year. At the time there were issues with the surveys and I know they had to pay for additional surveys to satisfy the mortgage company etc.
It turns out when they got their second survey they went back to the sellers, told them the survey said the property needed 20k spending on damp proofing and managed to get this amount knocked off their original offer.
I’ve just found out that in fact the second survey said the property was fine. It would never have occurred to me to play this trick and I’m a little bit shocked they had the nerve. So AIBU to think they are very ruthless (to put it politely) or is this something everyone does and I am missing out.

Wow, they're assholes!

That's not something everybody does (I'm a property lawyer - I see the surveys and the price and have never known anybody pull that kind of trick).

People do renegotiate offers sometimes, but I think outright lying about the survey results is shitty behaviour and I'd be questioning the morals of those friends.

Sellers were naive not to have asked to see the survey.

Terrible behaviour from your friend (it would make me look at her in a different way I must admit).

Equally naïve of the sellers to just take their word for it and knock the amount off the property, but in fairness to them I have never heard of anyone being so bloody cruel and lying about an issue like that, it doesn't happen so I can see why they would trust what they were told.

If I were the seller I'd have asked to see the survey first!!

In fact I would have had my own bloody survey done if someone suggested there was something that wrong with my house and I was trying to sell.

Oh God that's horrible. I bet they're really pleased with themselves.
We were gazumped yesterday. :(
Lovely big house, a bit run down, owners wanted a quick sale. Didn't know this bit until afterwards but someone they knew had already made a low offer privately. The owners wanted more and appointed an agent to invite sealed bids. We won the bidding process and the sale began to proceed- survey, searches mortgage etc.
Last week it went very quiet and then we heard they'd been in negotiations with the original party who gazumped us (and are cash buyers) so they get the house.
The agent was hopping mad as he won't get the commission and had some sharp words with the vendor who admitted to arranging the sealed bid process to engineer a bigger offer from the original party.

Luckily we were planning to keep our current house while we renovated so we hadn't sold - otherwise a whole chain behind is would have collapsed as well.
But as long as they engineered a good offer, that's ok!