Buyer wants money off following survey - what to do?

[Nellybell]

Hello,
Our buyer has had a survey, electrical survey, and 2 builders round to check our 1920s house. Following all these checks, buyer has asked for £5000 off but says house needs £10000 of work doing. I've asked for the detailed quotes but am not sure what the etiquette is with this type of scenario? Do you pay for essential work but not non essential as I suspect not all of it is urgent, essential work.

Is the surveyor's valuation based on the house before or after the work? If it is valued as it stands then money off is a bit of a joke!

If you are feeling generous get comparative quotes of your own then offer to split the difference. Companies asked to quote in this situation are less likely to give competitive quotes as they know that they are unlikely to get the job so go high to cover the costs of other quotes on the off chance that they get one.

Be aware that damp companies are very dubious and are happy to suggest over the top remedial works so that they get paid to do them. Often thwarting actual cause of the damp is ignored and left to cause ongoing damage. Get reliable recommendations for your area.

I think you've got the principle with visible versus unexpected, serious problems. The buyer bid based on what they could see. The survey shows up the unseen. Some of that may be serious and surprising. Other things are not surprising or worrying and are not likely to affect a sensible buyer. Some things may be unsurprising but more serious than expected, so may well affect willingness to pay.

I have walked away from house purchases twice because of problems emerging at survey, quotes and the vendors' unwillingness to budge on price. It's annoying because surveys are expensive, getting quotes time-consuming and in the second instance, I think if we'd asked at the outset whether the vendor was willing to negotiate following survey they'd have said no and we could have saved time and possibly money.

In that instance the vendor had not maintained the house, over many years, allowing problems to appear and worsen and guarantees expire. They wrongly believed we were trying to improve the house, rather than rectify unexpected, serious problems (damp, rotten joists, rotten window frames, cracks). They also wrongly believed their house was worth as much as others on the street that were well maintained. They have tried and failed to sell that house a number of times now, as every buyer will find the same things.

So, depends on the market and your keenness to sell but generally fair to take real problems seriously and recognise that all potential buyers will find the same problems.

Our buyers also had three separate surveys carried out on our (1930s) house. Their surveyor said that our roof tiles were reaching the end of their natural life and would need to be replaced 'in the medium term'. Buyer got a quote for £10,000 to replace the entire roof and asked for this to be taken off the purchase price. We had our own roofing survey carried out and a quote for £1500 to complete essential work (replacing the worn tiles) and offered to reduce the purchase price by that amount. We expected our buyers to ask us to meet in the middle, but they accepted our offer. I guess they'd already spent a few hundreds on the various surveys and liked the house enough not to lose it. For our part, we had three offers on the house and accepted theirs even though it wasn't the highest as it appeared to be the most proceedable. We were prepared to go back on the market if necessary, but didn't have to, luckily.

Thanks for messages. Lottie, it is useful to see it from the buyer's point of view. There is some damp and rotting joists and I am prepared to reduce for them. Just waiting to see what work is needed on roof and the breakdown of the quote for that. When the surveyor came he told me the roof was sound, so not sure why its so expensive. I can see that the guttering is looking a bit flaky so it may be that but isn't that something that would be visible when viewing?

Quote is for a complete re-roof! Surveyor told me the roof was sound and he wouldn't condemn it and he couldn't see any leaks. That makes the amount of work that needs doing only 4k possibly less if I write off that quote as unecessary.

Have you seen the survey?

Gosh, the things I should have asked the previous owners for! Its fairly old - so a reroof - and insulation - and a new kitchen (it was then 20 yrs old - it is now 29 years old and can't see when its going to get done) and a complete rewire, new carpets (less impractical colour) and redecoration throughout... I think that would have covered it.

Another buyer's perspective. We had a survey come back saying the property we were interested in had a rotten staircase but the full extent of the rot couldn't be established because the owner refused to allow the surveyor to lift carpets to check. The survey contained detailed information, photos of the visible rot and a quote for replacing the stairs (about 2% of the offer we had originally put in).

We gave the owners a copy of the survey and asked them what they wanted to do (do the work themselves/split the cost/accept a lower offer). They told us the house was "sold as seen" and that they wouldn't do any remedial works or accept a lower price. (We had offered 1% under their asking price and the property had been on the market for almost 3 years).

We walked away as we felt that we had been reasonable in providing them with all the information and trying to come to an agreement with them. They eventually sold the house 2 years later for 15% less than the asking price.

DS1 and gf bought a flat that had been previously rented out for a long time. Had a heating survey (as well as structural) which said that the boiler was unusable. Vendor immediately offered half the cost of a new one which (total cost about £2200. DS1 was delighted and went ahead.

When I bought my current house, the vendors knocked money off for decoration, but the state was pretty grim and they didn't want to clean it (inhereted house, so no chain etc, and objective vendors). I spent most of the money on a new bathroom and getting rid of artex!

Thanks for the messages. Duffy, it would be really helpful to have seen the survey and been offered a few options as you did with your vendor. I got a copy of 2 of the quotes but not the survey. I have offered half of what the buyer has asked for and he is thinking about it and was going to let me know today but got in touch with EA to say it would be Monday instead. Am i being unreasonable by offering half when they have already only asked for half of their full quote in the first place. Just having doubts now that i have jeopardised it!

Sit tight and don't panic, Nelly! If your buyer has already spent a fair amount of money having three surveys done, they must like and want the house. They're unlikely to walk away completely, I'd guess, but may come back to you to negotiate further.

My first house surveyor came in £10k less, I really wanted it, but mortgage company wouldnt help,so I asked sellor to split and they did.

But I did offer them a copy of the valuation.

They'll probably keep talking if they're really interested. It is a buyers' market though, so they'll have choices. It's going to depend on what the house is really worth to them. One factor is whether the offer you accepted was low or generous.

Our offer on the un-maintained house had been quite generous, so we'd have wanted at least £10k of the £13k costs identified, off. That included the cost of our existing mortgage for a month, as sorting out the rotten joists and damp would have made the house uninhabitable and delayed our moving in for that long. Luckily we idn't have a buyer snapping at our heels, as renting and storage would have cost more.

For contrast, I bought one house in a fast, rising market and didn't worry at all about a small patch of damp and a couple of minor issues, as the surveyor thought the house was generally in good order.

I learnt from that, that 25 year guarantees aren't worth anything if the company has gone out of business (quite a common occurrence)!

Lottie, it was a generous offer!

I'll see what happens tomorrow. I didn't say this is it or we are pulling out so they could come back with a counter offer but when i was doing some research last night it looked like most people asked once and then agreed on a 50/50 split. so maybe i should have done that. I don't know, its a pain having to hang around to find out and I might have annoyed them. Still i didn't want to accept straightaway as they might have kept on pushing for more and any money I can save for us is a bonus.

I think it would be worth getting quotes for the work yourself, just to make sure. We've been in a similar position to you and found that the buyers quotes were hugely overpriced and quite possibly a bit of a back hander type job.

Waiting.......

So Nellie, how did it all pan out? We're going through v similar situation now three years on, and am v interested to know what you finally agreed on.

I wouldn't reduce price or even negotiate unless I had a copy of the survey. If the surveyor put a markedly less value on the house than the agreed offer I might negotiate but not without the survey. I got 2,500 off my current house as it needed £5,000 of work that wasn't apparent til survey but we gave the vendors a copy of the survey to look at for themselves.

our buyers have had a damp survey done (following a HomeBuyers Report Survey) which apparently states £1,000 worth of damp work is needed. And told the EA to suggest we either have the work done ourselves before completion, or take the same amount off the Agreed price. We're not happy to do either; the price is already 10k lower than our original asking price. I've asked to see the damp survey to ascertain if the work is actually needed. Or if the FTB's are simply being cheeky for asking us to further lower our price..

When I sold the buyers wanted 2k off the 150k for damp which was flagged up.

I offered them 1k off and they agreed to that.

As long as the main surveyor doesn't come back with a lower figure you aren't obliged to agree to anything.
Some people will just try their luck and depending on how quick a sale you want will depend on if you are prepared to drop or not.

Our first house lost about 6k from the survey to what we would have agreed to pay for the house. They had to drop the price as otherwise nobody would have got a mortgage to buy it.

Our original asking price was OIEO of £220k. We had tentative interest but no offer, and because we'd found somewhere we wanted to buy we wanted to secure a reasonably quick sale, so dropped to £215k. This generated more interest and an offer which we accepted of £210k. It's this figure our FTBs now want a further £1k off, because of "damp". But the damp surveyor had told me there was no real damp issue, nothing untoward in a house of this age (late Victorian), and he commented "your buyers are getting a v nice house for the money". Which is why we're not keen to drop the price further, when the damp work appears to be mainly cosmetic. I'm waiting for a copy of the survey and quote to judge for myself.

What did the the surveyor vale the property at? If it's the same as the offer then no renegotiation it really is as simple as that.