Bored with this now...should I tell my buyer to bog off...or is this normal?

[TheCokeMachine]

So my buyer has had a full structural survey, CCTV cameras down all the drains (no problems found anywhere) and is now asking me to buy indemnity insurance for a wall which was removed in the 1970's (three owners before me).

I'm becoming more than a little tired of this now, it seems that every question I answer, every certificate I provide, every last minute survey I agree to is met with another question or reason that we can't get to exchanging contracts.

Should I just tell them to take a hike, I'm pretty fed up with them today. I don't need to sell the house to move. I'm just seeing them raise issue after issue and I could just pop this place up for rent, and do a quick exchange on the chain free house I'm buying.

Is this normal buyer behaviour or am I being messed with? With the house I'm buying I've just accepted the survey and told the solicitor to proceed. I don't bloody care about the drains or the building regs for the extension that was built in 1980 - surely after 30 years it's not enforceable anyway! Maybe I should start asking all this stuff too???

Seriously - what is normal with regards to survey/indemnity/liability these days? Did you get CCTV down the drains and insist on building regs for a wall that was torn down 30 years ago? I reckon if the house was going to fall down due to said wall - it would have happened by now!

End of rant, can someone offer any words of wisdom?

"
Once we are in the house, if we ever do any other work (extension,conversion maybe) the council will automatically find out that there's no regs and you then have to do whatever it takes to bring your house up to building regs standard."

surely that wouldn't apply to work done before a certain point (2002?) - they would only expect the new structure to be compliant?

curious as obviously most houses have had modifications done pre-building regs.

I feel like my solicitior was more organised about asking for everything we needed pretty much early on, not via drip feeding. We've had extension issues too. Some things seemed to take time to come back from various sources and tiem to process. But they were all part of one process, ifswim.

Reading the OP this sounds more like they're saying; we're ready to go, wait no we aren't we just need the one more new thing done that we haven't mentioned before. But maybe I'm reading into things. Myabe their solicitor isn't very organised. Is it a question that the survey came back with issues that they can't quite get comfortable with?

I would probably be going to my solicitor to try to figure out if they're getting cold feet.

Some people are just over-anxious. I have bought every place I've ever bought on the strength of the mid-range survey and they've all been fine.

If the house isn't falling down and there isn't any major structural stuff that needs doing (damp, subsidence, dry/wet rot), it's probably fine.

I figure that if I buy a house that's survived two wars and has been standing for 100 years+, it's probably fine.

I would get a bit arsey too and insist on an exchange date

OP, I've sent you a PM.

Having worked in a brokers as a mortgage underwriter I would also like to suggest that it is the lender, not the buyer, that is being overly cautious. I have had many lenders request lots of silly reports that are probably not necessary just through overcaution. It does really depend on the lenders underwriter, and their caution to risk.

Plus if they are FTB's they are going to be doing everything their lender/solicitor advises them to because they are not experienced home buyers and it is an awful lot of money to be parting with.

Well, after a chat with our solicitor yesterday we decided to make some demands.

It wasn't the fact that they were asking for surveys etc, etc - the problem was the slow drip feed of requests and the constant cancelling/rescheduling of everything that was arranged. We've had 10+ weeks of this now and the indemnity insurance (requested by them, not the lender) was the last straw.

So we told them to pay their own insurance and to get their act in gear, or we will pull the house off the market if they are not in a position to exchange by 31st July.

Thanks for the advice on this. Fingers crossed we'll get moving now, and if not we have a cut off date.

ETA: They are not first time buyers and we sold the house at 10% below the valuation on the promise that they would complete quickly.