Could I risk losing this is I renegotiate?

[falaff]

Hi all,

I am in the final stages of buying a house. It's in a very popular area where they all go for more than the asking price and sell within days of being on the market. I really like the house and obviously want to proceed.

I have had my survey through which has highligted a few issues including woodworm, damp and a few structural things. I have investigated several of these and am prepared to deal with the costs myself. However, there is a significant potential issue with the roof - it has a heavy replacement covering, caused it to bow, which has been highlighted in the survey and confirmed by a builder today that it may need strengthening in the future.

I am really worried about renegotiating - if they say no, so be it, and I'll have to proceed with the agreed price and take the risk. What I'm worried about is them telling me to eff off and selling it to someone else. The sale has taken a long time due to covid and because my mortgage advisors messed up, and I've asked a lot of (legitimate) questions to make sure I'm buying the right house which the solicitors have been pretty slow on.

Any advice on the risk of renegotiating?

Ugh sorry about the typo in the title!

They surely want to sell as much as you want to buy and they don't want to have wasted all the time with you. It wouldn't make sense for them to suddenly refuse to sell to you - who would risk losing a buyer and waste a tonne of their own time just to be petty?

Of course you should renegotiate. Unless you know the house needed work, including the roof when you made your initial offer this is an added expense, and one that could have been avoided if they hadn't put roof times o that are too heavy.

If it's going to cost £5K to fix you should offer £2.5k less for the house.

If they withdrew from the sale they would have to start from scratch with viewings, wait for mortgage offer, and go through all the survey queries again to be in exactly this position with a new buyer who will also question they integrity of the roof.

Thanks. I am just really worried that basically there are many people who would buy this house if it went back on the market and so they don't have to be worried about reselling. But they are paying council tax on an empty property.

I was going to write a nice letter saying that I'm happy with everything and willing to absorb some costs, and apologise for how long it's taken, and then ask for the reduction. As in serve it in a bit of a shit sandwich (albeit in artisan bread) :D

I would definitely renegotiate as anyone else buying would be in the same situation. Maybe they wouldn't take a bit of the total cost of the works, but a proportion of them?

Yes I'm thinking a proportion. I'm drafting a nice letter. I don't want to be a CF but I also don't want to have to fork out loads that I didn't account for. That said, if they say no, I will probably buy the house anyway, but I would need to put together a saving plan/backup to cover anything, and I really don't want to do that.

My understanding is that anything major that you couldn't have reasonably foreseen (or understood the implications of without qualifications) can be renegotiated on, but does everyone take this view? I really don't want them to be shocked and back out. I've taken a long time already (which the estate agent sees as me faffing, but it's things like covid affecting surveys and their mortgage advisor messing up my application ) and I don't know if they're already peeved at me.

I think in their shoes, I'd be thinking, well another buyer may do the same if they get a survey so just take the reduction?

Yep, I would list the jobs that need doing - to make it structurally sound not to make it suit you
So woodworm
Damp
other structural work
roof

Let them know the costs for sorting it. Then ask them to accept £x less than agreed price.
So long as this is half or less than half of the costs that you weren't told about by either them or the EA then they should bite your hand off. If all these things were mentioned before then they have already been accounted so you are unlikely to succeed.

So long as you are ready to go now and it doesn't depend on you selling a property to I think they should be fine.

You risk losing the house, but if you don't renegotiate, you're definitely getting shafted; your current deal, now you know the problems with the house, is crap anyway.

Decent people will see what plain and reasonable cause you have to renegotiate and it's common to do it after a survey when problems are uncovered.

@ShebaShimmyShake

You risk losing the house, but if you don't renegotiate, you're definitely getting shafted; your current deal, now you know the problems with the house, is crap anyway.

Decent people will see what plain and reasonable cause you have to renegotiate and it's common to do it after a survey when problems are uncovered.

This is the thing. I don't want to risk losing the house. But I don't want to be a wuss and just suck up the costs regardless. The roof seems to be the main one for me, the rest I can either do myself or cope with. I am so scared of them just ending the transaction

It's really not uncommon at all to renegotiate after the survey throws up a previously unknown problem. That's essentially the point of having a survey. It turns out that your current deal isn't actually a good one; you probably wouldn't have offered this much for the house if you'd known about the problems.

I've personally never heard of anyone pulling out of a sale purely for being asked to renegotiate...I may be lucky, but it's pretty standard practice after the survey uncovers a problem.