WIBU to pull out if they don't agree?

[NeedANewNameBriefly]

Reposting for traffic

Short version - are these issues bad enough to withdraw from property purchase and collapse the chain. Or should this be expected when buying a house.

YABU - Even without a reduction, these issues are not that bad

YANBU - They definitely need to reduce the price a bit

Full version

We are trying to purchase our "forever home", have gone madly over budget on something that isn't perfect, but we are happy enough with. Survey has come back and the work that needs doing seems to be quite a lot. We want to renegotiate the price and based on repair costs for the most significant things, so not just decorate issues for example we want to go lower by about 12% (that's what I've worked it out as being) - estate agent (of course) is saying they won't agree but she doesn't have their actual answer yet. To complicate matters, they are overseas and we cannot reach vendors directly (currently trying via the solicitors instead though)

Basically, we are not quite sure the best way to approach this and how much of this the vendor thinks should have been priced in to our offer, bearing in mind we were unaware of 99% of the issues prior to the survey. The 1% is an issue we believe they should and could still deal with through their buildings insurance.

For context here are some of the issues:

•Repointing of brickwork to two chimney stacks
•Replace a number of missing, slipped and damaged roof tiles (particularly to the front and rear slopes). However, given their age it may be more economic to recover the whole roof rather than continuing to repair. This is our main issue - we want to replace not further patch up the roof. Lots of patchy repairs previously done apparently.
•Carry out crack repair to the front elevation.
•Replace some of the double-glazed units to the conservatory - showing damage
• Porch – replace several roof tiles, and carry out longer-term repair to the far right post which is damaged
•Install additional air bricks and replace damaged air bricks to the right side - doesn't have anywhere near enough. Those it has are damaged
•Reduce the height of the external ground level at the front (or install a French drain) - drain is right in front of doorstep and cut back the timber decking at the rear- to mitigate damp penetration
•Adjust five of the internal doors - almost all doors do not close at all within the house
•Rectify leak from the shower hose/replace shower in the family bathroom
•Hot water cylinder appears undersized/replacement needed
•Replace the waste pipe from the dishwasher and rectify leak from gulley surround
•Secure boarding to the timber decking and carry out timber repairs where required

Most of those issues are things you can see like the decking so those are unreasonable.

For what it's worth I was told the chimney stack needed repointing and it's still standing after 6 years. A builder looked at it and said the surveyor was just covering his arse. He said he could do it but there wasn't really any need. It all just sounds like the expected survey for a house of its age.

@MacKenzieMcHale Really? Good repair is the same as having several holes in it and previous repairs don't badly? Ok 🤷🏾‍♀️

Assuming that the crack on the front elevation and the non closing doors are not symptoms of movement/ subsidence - which should certainly have been mentioned in the survey, it has revealed very little hidden problems.
I have only bought a handful of houses and don’t think the roof has been judged as good in any of them. The most common comment seems to be it has not been fully inspected and ‘may’ have issues. ( home buyers standard survey, rather than structural).
Getting a house re roofed is a large and expensive job, but the last small repair I had done on my roof cost £120.
I am curious as to which of the problems raised you think might be covered by the vendor’s insurance.

Honestly... YABU. And I say that as someone who renegotiated their purchase price based on survey issues (but we requested to reduce by 3% and it was for large issues).

I think 12% is cheeky (what have you based that on, as a lot of the repairs you mention either aren't essential and also not too costly. You have said you want to replace the whole roof, that's fair but your choice, given that just replacing the tiles would also resolve the issue for example). The fact you say you went madly over budget also hints that you regret your offer amount and now want to haggle down, again not the vendor's fault. I'd be really thinking about whether this is the right house for you?

@sasparilla1 Truly genuine question - how can one see the roof of a house from the ground? Except for maybe right at the edges at the front back and maybe the sides.

Like the guy has got a bunch of photos from the roof with a special camera. What should have been the clue? Because to me, I thought it was fine. I thought the whole house was fine. Except that it was kind of crooked. So main concern was that it wasn't about to fall down really.

It's an old house, circa 1910 (so much older than current home), owners seem to be mid-forties with a toddler.

I think it's fine to renegotiate when a survey throws up something specific and unknown e.g. my previous flat had damp. Got a quote to have it fixed for £3k, agreed to have £3k taken off the price. All happy.

Your wish list looks like it mostly consists of what would be considered pretty standard maintenance for an older property or upgrades of choice not necessity. You effectively want the vendor to pay for a renovation.

12.5% is clearly a piss take and I would put the property back on the market. In fact at such an extreme, I wouldn't even attempt to renegotiate because it's so far off.

Let us know what happens!! Is it your house or PIL?

Adjusting the internal doors tickled me too - I had a carpenter out a few weeks ago to shave off one of our doors as it wouldn't shut... £10 🤣

YABU

I have dropped a buyer like you before.

Beautiful house in the most beautiful location (area of outstanding natural beauty) and idiot woman starts niggling at nonsense.

So for the sake of her wanting to bring the price down by circa £10k she lost it because she wasn't very clever and failed to see the bigger picture/very rare opportunity.

Make no mistake, the vast majority of houses have something(s) wrong with them and if you love it enough you should be wise enough to not let it go.

You have nothing to lose my asking, the market is turning a bit & there is no guarantee that they will get more overs asking when mortgages are costing more.

Course the PIL thinks you should push for a 12% reduction as an estate agent, I bet they wouldn't be saying that if you were selling instead of buying. Their opinion I would take with a pinch of salt!

Can you go back to your name with capitals, OP? At the moment you’re more like “need2newnamesbriefly” as you’ve changed again so your posts aren’t highlighted as OP posts, which makes it more difficult to read!

Lets test how much of a CF you and your family are.......

How long is it since you had your bid accepted? How far down the line are you before your FIL suggested you lowball these people and hang them out to dry?

Lets get a real measure on whether you genuinely want to negotiate issues with the sellers or you just want to kick them in the testicles.

A leaking shower head....£20
Sticking doors - Fuck off
Pointing the chimney - Who cares, just get it done.

If you have not told your FIL to go to hell then you actually entertain him. If you have waited until the chain is in place for maximum effect then i hope you lose out. If its right at the start then ok but you still risk everything imo.

If that's all that's wrong in a 1910 house, count yourself lucky! However, it also doesn't sound like a full structural survey, which I would get done on a house of this age. If this WAS a full structural survey, kiss the ground, you don't have a more serious problem!

None of these things will get you a major discount imho.

You mentioned electrics issues - did you have a full survey done of the electrics? That's the one thing a lot of people regret (including us!). We needed lots of work done for it to be safe, and a friend who bought a slightly older house than ours had a small explosion in a hall. Definitely worth it, and IMO more useful than other surveys.

As soon as someone says forever home, you know what’s coming! Completely unrealistic expectations.

yes, we had a lot of issues on the electrics on our current house after buying. But even now, didn't realise realise an electrical survey was a "thing". We are going to get gas and electrics arranged asap.

You can but try. I got £10K off the price of a house for a new roof and that was in a thoroughly overheated market several years ago.

As if anyone would accept a £156k reduction for newly discovered issues!

It's a level 3 survey. I believe that used to be called a structural survey?

We are comfortable with the price we offered, as we wouldn't have offered it otherwise (even though it's admittedly a lot for us). So it's not really about getting a major reduction, it's just about making sure we aren't paying more than is fair/right.

And from this thread I have learned at least, that the vast majority on here is nothing to be overly concerned about. And as I said, since posting i now have had the full report through (survey was booked the same week offer was accepted. Was done last week and only bullets in an email to go off, which I received on Friday - there were 23 points in all, I listed a few here).

On the report, the two red flagged issues are relating to gas and electrics, but weirdly weren't mentioned in the email summary. But like I've always said, i don't think these warrant a massive cost reduction either (unless further investigations throw up something really bad I guess)

Not sure how you're making a house from that era out to be old. It's just not new. Oh and we can see most of our roof from the ground. Took the survey for this house with a pinch of salt though as the surveyor's comments on the septic tank showed that there was a wild misunderstanding of how it would function etc. Had the house electrically tested on moving in too, tested fine but didn't reveal the huge clusterf* that the wiring actually is....

We asked a buyer to return papers when they realised what underpinning was- we had been entirely upfront that the house had been etc but they were making very unreasonable demands/ expectations. We even shared details of who it was currently insured with etc. But no.

YABU. Those seem minor things to me. Yes, annoying and obviously all costs add up, but not major and certainly not worth pulling out if you really do see it as your 'forever home'. It seems from your post that you may be letting the fact that you've chosen to go "madly over budget" put you into a panic over having nothing left over to do any other work on the house...

I know 2 people who got over 100k each off doer uppers buying & selling is cutthroat

Most of those things are the sort of mostly trivial things you have to deal with in course of time in any house that isn't new. Many older houses don't have enough airbricks, or have had drives put on top of other drives, and are too high. And most of those things should have been evident at fist viewing, before you made an offer, so as a vendor I'd think you were taking the whatsit or just a time-waster if dropped your offer by 12% at a later stage .They will cost money to fix, sure, but they aren't, IMO, enough for a significant reduction in an offer. If the surveyor hasn't a concern about the crack, which wouold be my only serious concern, the same would apply there. I'm sorry but these things are just general maintenance.
We bought a doer-upper recently. We certainly had pretty much all of the things you mention, as most older houses do, but a doer-upper is far and away worse than that.You're talking of all the things you mention, plus rewiring, new drains, replastering, ripping out ancient and knackered kitchens and bathrooms, reroofing parts rather than just re-tiling, new floor joists, that sort of thing.

Oh and none of our doors close/ fit properly. Floors are properly slopy/ lumpy too.

Our new windows were made by the joiner only to discover the holes weren't actually properly square to fit them into.

Ceilings are wonky.

But, if it's still standing after close to 200 years, I think it's likely to be ok for my lifetime

The crack, ill fitting doors and "wonkiness" of the house (a 1910s house shouldn't be wonky) are more problematic imho and could, as a PP has mentioned, mean subsidence. Now that is expensive to fix. Does the survey have anything to say on that? Maybe go back to the surveyor and ask for an off the record opinion?