At what point shouldl we expect our vendors to chip in ?

[LIZS]

We had a valuation survey done on property we hope to buy which, whilst not giving any retention , highlighted possible damp in the loft timbers under Essential Repairs. We have a surveyor friend coming to cast his professional eye over it , at a discounted rate, but if it needs further investigation, incurring more of his and any specialist's time, should we ask and expect the vendor to pay up ?

I guess that depends on

1. How much you like the house

1. How much the repairs would be

1. How much sunk costs you'd lose (surveys etc) if you pull out now.

Every time we've bought, the surveyor has come up with some doom laden scenario, but every time we've just ploughed on and eventually paid for the repairs ourselves, just because we're too lazy to bother arguing about sums of less than about £10k.

Often, we haven't even bothered doing what the surveyors have recommended. They charge £2k or whatever and think they have to put something in their report to make it seem they're earning their money, imo.

Generally I'd agree with you, that surveyors feel obliged to say something. However our friend feels it is significant enough to be worth his time to look as the house is less than 15 years old so such comments wouldn't be expected. Whether we need to do anything about it is another matter.

Trouble is it is 12 years since we last bought/sold and remember we had a fuss over drainage on our old flat and ended up paying something towards the investigations.

I wouldn't expect the vendors to pay anything towards the investigations, I'd only expect some price negotiation iro any repairs.