To ask vendor to pay for full amount of damp costs

[madamdoodle]

My husband and I are about 11 weeks into purchasing our dream property - an 1800s cotswold stone cottage - which would also involve relocating to a different part of the SW.

The survey came up with a big red flags, mainly over the extent of the damp and suggested further, more thorough investigations which we’ve got booked in with a local specialist for early next month but the survey came up with £40k worth of red flags… a lot of which we’ve gone through and feel that’s it’s just the surveyor covering their backs so wanted to investigate electrics/plumbing further for a more realistic assessment.. and so far, so manageable.

however on going to visit the property to measure up I noticed for the first time, probably due to recent wet weather, that the ground floor of the house smelt strongly of mildew and was very humid to the point that the furniture was wet! When I pulled a - wet- armchair out to examine the wall behind I could put my finger through the panelling. There was black mould in the cupboards. Upstairs seems unaffected in any obvious way.

I have been digging around as much as I can to research this and ended up speaking to a lime specialist who has experience working with damp in old heritage houses and he told me (on the phone without looking at the issue) that I could expect to be paying in the realms of £40k.

The housing market in the area is slow as it’s rather rural and we were the only people to put in a bid. The vendor isn’t buying another property and so doesn’t need a specific figure but obviously wants to get the best price they can. To pay for a thorough damp survey with a specialist with knowledge in heritage buildings will be £1.2k and I’m hesitant to pay for that unless the vendor is willing to pay for the costs of remedial work needed to rectify the (significant) issues.

AIBU to ask the vendor to agree to absorb the cost of the damp issues which could be anywhere in the region of 15-40k? With the interests rates as they are and to cover the other issues that need addressing - average for age of the property - there’s no way we can afford to pay for it ourselves and would be forced to back out.

if you’ve got this far, thanks for reading!!

You can ask but be prepared to pull out

We had a similar thing in that our survey found the roof was completely knackered and unmortgagable. We pulled out but the vendor offered to fund the replacement in order to secure the sale, so you never know.

Be prepared to walk away. You can’t expect an old home to be Barratt new build perfect. They presumably knew about the damp and priced it accordingly.

Thoroughly reasonable to ask, they may say no though.

Be willing to pull out, damp in a home is awful if not properly dealt with.

Just be aware that living in a mouldy home can make you seriously ill. I’d think very carefully about going through with the sale to be honest.

I would pull out unless you can be very clear what the cause is and that it is fixable.

I very much doubt you'll find a stone cottage from the 1800's that doesn't suffer with damp, to be honest.

If you go ahead, you need to be prepared to live with it forever. You can't do much to stop it due to the way the house is built.

I'd pull out personally. A damp house is horrible.

Walk away.

For an 1800s house you will need to have some understanding of how to live in it and with it and how to ensure it's breathable, through heating and ventilation and, most importantly, not using modern impervious materials. It is a commitment.

Tbh, on the whole we have always split the cost of damp works in the past.

I imagine the sellers and the estate agent are aware and it’s been priced accordingly, it’s quite normal for properties of that age to have damp issues.

So you can ask, but be prepared for them to say no.

Have you compared to what other similar properties in the area have sold for?

You shouldn’t be taking on a stone cottage from 1800 unless you have deep pockets to stay on top of constant maintenance and repairs.

Only the vendor knows how desperate they are to sell but I would guess that the market for chocolate box cottages is always going to be stronger than Barrett boxes, so if they aren’t in a chain relaying on the sale, they may not need to drop the price.

But you need to think long and hard if you have the time, money and contacts book to take on a house like that

You can ask, but you should only be going back to them asking for money off over and above what you could have seen evidence of when you viewed, or expected due to age/condition. And an 1800 cottage I would expect to have some issues.

Or of course you can walk away. Probably sensible as there are likely to be ongoing upkeep costs on an old building, and it sounds like that might be a stretch. Everything tends to cost more.

You can ask but they may say no.

Part of buying an old property though is accepting there will always be some damp. Obviously not an unhealthy amount of damp but there will be some regardless of how much work you do.

We had a bay window tanked and damp proofed but even then there was still some damp that got through on particularly cold days. It’s just part of living in an old house.

That sounds like an awful lot of damp, I'd be tempted to walk away.

Damp would be a massive red flag to me. Some things are fixable, I mean it's worth doing a full re-wire or changing the windows if those are needed and it's your dream property, because you know it will sort the problem. Damp is far more tricky, and even after spending a fortune, you could find yourself with ongoing issues. And even if you have a guarantee after getting work done, it would be a massive upheaval to have to get damp proofing redone... you're talking plaster off the walls, tanking, re plaster, full decoration. And as others have said, living in a damp property really isn't fun. It'll ruin your furniture. Be prepared to walk

Tanking would be totally inappropriate in an 1800s house. OP would need to increase breathability not make it worse.

I wouldn’t touch this with a bargepole.

Red flag to me I'd pull out.
Chances are if there's that there a lot more wrong

This.

OP are you in SPAB? If not I recommend joining for the very helpful factsheets and advice line. If you go ahead with this you need to be prepared to put some effort into learning about historic buildings, otherwise you will be at the mercy of people trying to sell you inappropriate solutions which could make things worse.

Make sure your 'damp specialist' actually knows about how to manage damp in an 1800s stone cottage. It's most likely they don't and just want to sell you damp courses and injections, all of which are totally inappropriate for this sort of property.

The leading (by far) causes of damp in properties of this ages are:

Leaks and water getting in

Use of wrong materials - using cement based products and not lime

You can pretty much work out the problem for yourself by looking for these 2 things.

I lived with my damp for many years and over those years every workman in the property had a suggestion...
Eventually I had the wall repointed with lime, the damp gushed out and then was over for good.

This article basically tells you 99.9% of what you need to know:

https://www.heritage-house.org/damp-and-condensation/managing-damp-in-old-buildings.html

An 1800 year old cottage probably hasn’t got any sort of damp proofing. Floors probably laid directly on earth. You would have to take up the whole of the downstairs flooring and tank it out. I don’t think £40, 000 will touch the edges since the surveyors have flagged up other issues as well. Panelling you can put your finger through! If you can’t afford to do the work without the vendors chipping in ( and why do you imagine they are selling without doing the work themselves) then leave it for someone with deeper pockets or an army of builders in the family.

Stone built cottages don't need damp-proofing!

Well this one clearly does.

Don't tank out an 1800s property

It needs to breathe!

Hard to say. I have experience with stone cottages and know how to correct damp in them very cheaply as it is often caused by bad upgrades in the 1960s-1990s rather than inherent in the house. Stripping back and using traditional methods usually gets a house breathing and damp free.

But if you are new to all this, and are relying on the many ‘damp specialists” who are more often than not cowboy contractors then not sure this is the property for you?

If you want to go ahead, I’d advise joining the listed property club and looking up the English heritage property guides and so on so you can know what your cottage needs.

What you’d probably get is a reduction in the house price due to active damp but that’s about it. It is something you will need to solve yourself bit by bit through detective work and hiring specialist tradesmen/women or learning how to do it yourself (ie lime plaster is dead easy to do :)