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.

Also re the garage, it was closed off to the viewers. We couldn't get inside it. The first time we got inside was in November around the time of the the survey results. The executor was the one who said it was asbestos and that the rear wall was wobbling and that he felt we needed it dealt with urgently. The survey confirmed this and also that the garage was marked as red flag due to the walls crumbling at the rear. It can't be left.

Your dilemma is actually very simple. All you need to do is decide which of the following outcomes is worse:

1. You pay what you have already offered.
2. You ask for a discount, upset the seller and lose the house.

Which is worse? Only you know that. Don't fret about the probability of the seller getting pissed off with you. That's irrelevant, you can't control that. Just decide which outcome is worse, that's your decision made for you.

@MorningStarling thanks, I agree. I've put my foot down and said no to hubby. If we can't afford to do it up then we can't afford to move because we won't find anything else for that size in our area that isn't now out of our reach.

As many others have said - Asbestos garage roofs are very common and not really a health risk. If you decide to replace the roof or convert it into a living space - depending on where you are - many councils will have a free cart away service. In our old area of London - provided it's bagged up in special asbestos bags they will cart away all the roof sheets and I think 80kg of 'fibers' for free once per year. Just need to find someone to take them down. We had buyers making similar noises when we sold our house but that information disarmed their requests for money off.

OP has already stated the entire garage is asbestos - not that unusual in a stand one garage of a certain age - and is in poor condition so it needs to be removed.

This is not a cheap job. Few if any councils allow you to dispose of ACMs free of charge.

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.

Sorry, I don't think you have much chance of a reduction.

We got the survey results around November and met the seller at the house just after. He walked us round pointing out all the faults and actually said he expected us to reduce our offer because of the issues.

This ^ puts a completely different perspective on it though.
Without this post, I agree with everyone else, but, if the vendor has said to you he expects you to reduce the offer, then I don't understand why you wouldn't have started that conversation back in November.
Ultimately, you still want the house, and you know that if you try and insist you will likely lose it to any one of the other offers BUT, if he has already said that to you, you aren't going to lose anything by asking.

I would investigate the cost of removing the asbestos. It's a massive unknown that came up that is the only cost I would try to negotiate a reduction for, get a quote.

@Kite22 because my Dad died unexpectedly that month. Seller was aware that we had a lot on because I was away with my Ma and hubby at home with kids. We also felt it was important to get quotes from experts rather than just request a random amount. There's been delays on getting those quotes due to covid, Christmas and the seller only popping down once a week.

Given the seller had 43 other offers, I'd assume he was talking crap when he said that to you though. I mean, you can chance it, but probate houses don't ever drop the price, IME, and especially not when it's a seller's market.

If the property has developed damp in the past few months, that would be very unusual. It was there but you didn't see it.

Presumably you asked whether it had been rewired since the 80s.

You can't expect to drop the price because you didn't do your homework.

I think you could certainly ask for a 10k reduction and expect to negotiate on that a bit. We accepted an offer 20k over asking then negotiated 6k in allowances and they wanted 10. I was still happy with the deal. We had multiple offers also.