House Purchase Leak

[Alexa96]

Hey! Any advice appreciated as we’re in a pickle.

We’re purchasing a property and the week of exchange the house had a severe leak.
by Leak, a burst pipe in the attic, through 1st floor ceiling, onto the landing through the floor, down the stairs & water coming out the front door.

weve had the damage assessed by a builder and agreed with vendors a reduction in price to reflect. Our preference is to do the work ourselves to enable us to choose and renovate as we wanted.

my concern is it has been 12 weeks with no dehumidifiers or any input from insurers (apart from providing them a figure for payout or to do the work)

when we visited a few weeks after the leak, the property was still untouched (carpets still down, no heating on) as vendors were waiting for insurance.

im concerned about long lasting damage, such as mould. My son has respiratory conditions, which is making me anxious. We won’t be living there while undertaking the work.

but what I’m asking is, if there is mould, & from what I can see there is tell tale signs, paint on wood bubbling, patches on ceiling. Can it be removed effectively and no future issues.

thanks so much

What reduction have you agreed upon?

How long have you estimated works to take to make the property good and where will you live in the interim period ?

Have you exchanged? If not I’d be running for the hills

I wouldn’t touch that property now.

Mould is so toxic for health and incredibly difficult to remove once established.

12 weeks?! Presumably you didn’t exchange on the property as planned in the week of the leak? Honestly, I’d be walking away from it now, particularly as you apparently wish to do the work yourselves. Are you just expecting the vendors insurance to cover the initial drying out? It’s just going to get messy and I suspect there will be some grey areas between what the insurers think counts as restoring the property to a liveable condition and your expectations of the baseline from which you wish to start doing your own works. The insurers won’t deal with you as you are not their client and the vendors have no incentive to push for the works to be done to any particular standard – they’re leaving the property before any longer term issues arise!

This makes no sense - we had a similar catastrophic leak and the insurers came and removed everything within 4 days and started the dehumidifiers. We had to move out, and the dehumidifiers were left on for weeks and weeks before work could begin.
12 weeks with no activity is not ok, I would be very worried about long term issues.

Also just for context. The vendor wasn’t living at the property, they had moved out already.
We haven’t exchanged contracts.
The insurers have been there but we haven’t had any reports sent to us. I’m very surprised that dehumidifiers haven’t been in there from day 1

I’d pull out. The leak is really unfortunate but these things do happen and can be fixed.

The 12 week delay is the problem
here. It points to a lack of care for the property which would put me off. Houses don’t need to be fancy but they do need properly maintained over a long period of time.

The only way I would proceed now is if the reduction in price is big enough to cover a complete rip out, back to brick etc. But do you really want the hassle?

I’m so sorry but you have to pull out. You will find something and likely complete before this mess is even sorted out