AITA: buying a new house

[SailorBeware]

Hello, so I'm looking for some opinions as I'm dithering.

We live in an area where house prices have skyrocketed. We've been looking for ages but were always pipped at the post. For the last 18 months, every property has gone for more than the asking due to a lack of availability.

Anyway, our dream home came on the market and by some stroke of good fortune, we beat the 43 other offers (not kidding) and ended up offering £47k over asking (the next three below us were very, very close to what we offered. We were willing to pay that. The place is exactly what we were looking for size wise and location wise, but the cherry on the top is the garden. It's massive, south facing and completely secluded. Huge oaks and birches, gorgeous established beds, and goes on forever.

However very little work has been done since the 1980s. It's damp, the drive needs lowering as it is making the damp worse, the electrics have been done but are external and need chasing in, the bathroom is a vision with a steel bath, polystyrene ceiling tiles throughout and (drum roll please) an asbestos garage.

We still want the house. We knew there would be a lot of work and accepted the ceiling tiles and the bathroom. The electrics/heating/plumbing all work so we would deal with them initially but they would need changing.

But the asbestos garage? The damp. The driveway. We've had quotes and it's gonna come to at least £20k just for those alone.

Given that we've offered £47k over asking, do you think it would be cheeky to ask them to reduce the price by £20k? It's still £27k over asking. My husband says that's what he wants to do, but i'm unsure.

further info: it's a probate property so no-one is living there, it's being handled by an executor, the profits from the sale will be split between the remaining relatives and not needed to fund retirement homes or care/nursing homes.

What did Reddit say when you posted your question there?

What is an asbestos garage? We have a garage with asbestos roof tiles. It's been there for 50 years and will be for 50 years plus more. Our surveyor advised us not to replace it as they are bombproof and harmless so long as you don't start messing with it

My feeling is that reducing your offer based on what comes up in a survey is fine. Reducing an offer based on things you already know about but are now faced with the reality of correcting, not fine.

I would expect most garages from the 1980s or earlier to have some asbestos , but would maybe ask for some off for the need to redo the driveway to fix the damp issue. You could always ask, especially as they are expecting you to, but £20k feels like an ask too far

Hi, I was in a similar situation in June…was not paying over asking price that much, but still multiple bids.
I did manage to get price reduced after issues came up on survey…I basically sent a report to the vendors with the things that I was not expecting works to be needed on given what vendors told me at viewing. I listed 3 quotes for each work, and then said I was only willing to now pay x less. We negotiated a bit, compromised and agreed at lower price.
However, these works included things like re laying flat roofs they told me at viewing they’d had replaced in last 4 years…the surveyor said they’d had cowboys doing it and I had photos of just how bad the roofs were and why they needed redoing. Similarly with external rendering they’d had done- needed redoing as some cowboy they’d got in compromised the damp proof course and was leading to damp ingress.
I didn’t try to claim anything on works needed that they hadn’t done , it was stuff they’d told me they’d done as “improvements” . I used the argument that any buyers survey would show this up.

Asbestos is only dangerous if disturbed. If it's not crumbling and you aren't planning on making any alterations to the garage it's not something you need to address at all.

@Rightshoardingsaurus

As the comments above and double BU for not respecting this forum and AIBU!

Agreed - it’s CFery

Asbestos garage is not a problem- low risk asbestos and only an issue on removal- needs to be wrapped but can be taken to the tip
Many garages of the 40-80s are

Bath and polystyrene tiles are cosmetic. You can pull the tiles down yourself and get someone to skim- done this is many times

So far we are at less than £1000

The drive and the damp- is it actually an issue?

An asbestos garage doesn't need a drum roll. it needs a buyer who bothers to google and isnt a drama llama.

So many potential buyers - if I was selling this property I would turn your request down like a shot and move onto one of the other 42!

Put yourself in the sleer's position and ask what you would do.

seller's

I think if a property needs this level of work then the price already reflects that.

Share the survey and costs to correct with your solicitor and see what their view on it is.

If you ask for £20k off the price they may just go to another of the 43 offers they've already had. Depends whether you really want the house and work.

Also, asbestos garages are not difficult to sort out. Don't let that alone put you off.

Asbestos garages are not difficult to sort, no, but they are very expensive to deal with. You are paying someone for their expertise. A cowboy will take it down cheaply with no safety precautions. Proper management of asbestos costs money.

House prices have very little to do with the value of the house. It’s all about the balance of power between buyer and seller.

Clearly you’re in a seller’s market with a massive queue of other keen buyers behind you, so you have no power in this situation.

That makes it very very unlikely that you can negotiate a discount, even where it’s reasonable.

(You could try having a very tentative chat with the seller’s agent saying that the survey has revealed some issues that weren’t visible at the viewing, that will come up with any buyer, and do they know what the seller’s stance is on cos of fixing survey issues? But if you do this be very cautious. In the situation you describe I would not even risk this conversation. The market may still be rising and they could just put it up for sale again. We lost a house over a tentative conversation with an agent, they just spoke to their client who told them to put it back on market asap, and 24 hrs later it had sold for a higher price to someone else while we were still trying to backtrack on the conversation. 😥 market had risen etc etc that tentative conversation ended up costing me £80k.

Also be aware that the figures you have been quoted for the work may not be reliable. Fixing asbestos in a garage is not usually a big deal - see www.roofadvisor.co.uk/how-much-does-an-asbestos-garage-roof-removal-cost/. I don’t know the damp situ but with my house the survey showed damp and the specialist recommended by the surveyor said that it was rising damp and needed lots of work. We paid for it, cost thousands. Later learned that there was no rising damp merely a leaky pipe 😡, and I felt that the damp survey and subsequent ‘remedial’ work was a bit of a scam tbh. So you probably don’t have enough info yet to be certain what the house really needs doing to it.

With 43 other bidders I would not try and lower the price now. Leave the garage as it is for now, and do the most critical work. If the driveway is causing damp, then that's more important than the bathroom for example.

I am guessing this is a longterm house for you, so the 20 grand won't make much difference in the end.

@LittleRedYoshi

Which would you regret more - losing the house, or overpaying for it?

It comes down to this. Remember also that the executor has a legal responsibility to do their best for the beneficiaries. Not only do they have other offers to fall back on, because of those offers, they CAN'T negotiate in the same way that a homeowner can.

I voted that 20k is a very steep drop considering how many others wanted the house, but if the current owner/executor has said to you that he expects you to reduce your offer and that he will accept it, that's a different matter.

I'd personally hold back on asking for a drop unless the issues are very unexpected or catastrophic and other buyers are also unlikely to want the house at the original price either.
Asking for a reduction because the boiler needs replacing, or other issues that are to be expected/were evident on viewing = YABU
Asking for a reduction because the survey showed significant subsidence/damp etc which wasn't evident on viewing = YANBU

Is it a risk your willing to take? Your heart doesn't really sound in it anyway?

Key questions
Can you genuinely afford to do critical work needed within a year? Get the price and add 50 percent to it.
If you cannot then seriously consider if its for you. Its sounds like a whole load of unknowns to be that you can make light of if you are bringing equity from a previous sale and are sure you are going to be there long enough to justify the expense. But that isn't where you are!

Put simply, my dad died unexpectedly so I went to stay with my mum while hubby was holding down the fort here with job and kids. Then covid. It was a fun end to 2021 /s

It sounds like it was obvious the house would need a lot of work, and other bidders will have recognised that too.

You can try to reduce your bid, but if I owned the house I would just say I will move down to the next bidder.

There are patterns of people doing this - bid big to get the house then chip away at the offer when they get a survey done. Fair enough if all of a sudden the property has a major scriptural flaw that couldn’t have been anticipated. But for a house that hasn’t been updated in forty years you will expect issues with damp etc.

The question is can you still afford it and is ot worth it to you?

It occurs to me, OP, that if you plan to live there a long time, the value isn't likely to go down...and if you correct all the problems it has, it'll be worth even more.

I don’t understand your voting options but I think YABU and if I were the sellers I’d just go to the next best offer. As it’s probate there may be a few people involved/waiting to get their cash(!) so they’ll see you as flaky and I would be questioning how committed you were

Reading your post again I am very confused. Did you not view the property before making an offer?