To not know what to do.

[fancybiccies]

Long story short, we bought a house a year ago. Needed some work, but ultimate plan was to do it up, make some money and move back to near family.
We have bought the house, gutted it and done everything. New kitchens, bathrooms, carpets, decoration, landscape gardens etc.
We had a survey (just regular home buyers survey) when we were buying and everything came back fine. No issues with structural/damp/anything.
We have a buyer and are due to exchange in a week.
They have just paid a surveyor to go over the entire property over the course of 3.5 hours. It was the most comprehensive survey you can buy.
They have come back with so so many things they are saying is wrong.
They say that the garden is sinking and needs digging up and re landscaping, the loft is apparently covered in mold, the garden walls around all 4 sides are twisting and need knocking down and rebuilding, the drains are blocked. They want to knock £50,000 off the purchase price a week before exchange.
Our survey done a year ago shows none of this. Just garden and walls satisfactory, they have moved slightly when settling but this is deemed as old and the property is now 20 years old.
Builder friend says that items in the loft often get covered in mold. The items up there aren’t even ours, I think they’ve been there 20 years. It’s a few old Santa sacks and a box of cuddly toys.
What would you do?

You can say you've had a surveyor round, even if you'd paid for it you don't have to share it as it would belong to you.

OP this happened to me, with one major difference. Massive survey. Found nothing wrong. They still blustered that "property values had changed since they offered" and wanted £40k off. Which happened to be their original offer.

They had clearly done this purely to find anything to hang a price reduction on. There is more that made it even more obvious but I won't go into it.

Obviously we said no.

Me too, EveHolt, except it was my late DF's place and the rear wall was allegedly collapsing

Too bad that the "surveyor" had actually been sent in by the Estate Agents, who were trying to buy the place for an in-house deal ... too bad also that the surveyor let drop his association with the agent (though not their intention, which was only too clear anyway)

I’m sure there’s probably some truth in the survey, eg garden sunk slightly due to the foundations it is on, and they’ve read the report as meaning there’s subsidence instead of being built on marsh and clay.
Either way I don’t trust them anymore after this stunt.

My advice would be get another buyer.
My friend had a similar thing. The buyers gushed over property and offered asking price. The buyers they preferred couldn’t offer full price. Over the next few months the buyers found fault after fault and got reductions until the price was what the other buyers had offered . It was too late for friend to go back to other potential buyer as they were too far in the process.
They finally moved out and two weeks later the horrible new buyers very angrily contacted estate agent to say the dining room ceiling had come down. Turned out there was a slow leak under the bath above that my friend knew nothing about.
My friend related this to me with a very big smile on her face.

I don’t trust them anymore after this stunt

Very wise of you, OP. It's obviously important to treat this as a business transaction rather than a personal one, but I wouldn't go with them now even if they appeared to back down

There'd be nothing to stop them revisiting their demand on the actual day of exchange, and given their behaviour so far that's exactly what I'd expect them to do

How did it go ok
P?

@fancybiccies did it all sort itself out?