If you found out house you were buying needed £20k of work ...

[RollingThunder]

Buying house, survey came through, had quotes, looks like house needs around 20k of work.

What would you do. Should we expect all that money off? Half and half with seller? Don't know where to start negotiations.

Any advise?

I'd be treading carefully. 20K of work..hmm.. estimations of major work have a habit of morphing into a lot more. Is it symtomatic of an even bigger problem?

Be sure that it really will be 20K or whatever it turns out to be, then go back to the seller and negotiate down.

Tread carefully. In my experience, if you can see major work is needed than there will be other work needed on top that you will only become aware of once you have moved in.

Work out what the house is worth once it has been fully restored/repaired and then subtract 125% of a realstic builders cost estimate to take account of your time and inevitable overruns and surprises.

Unfortunately, I have found many sellers just think they can sell their house in obvious need of repair for the same price as a house in good condition. They cannot afford to sell for less and cannot afford to do the repairs so they hope for someone to come along who will not spot the problems. Sounds like the agent feels the seller is being unreaslistic.

We just bought a house needing a lot of repair/refurbising but we got a big discount. Everyone thinks we got a bargain, inlcuing the selling agent but I know how much the repairs are costing me and there were things we didn't spot so we definitley did not get a 'cheap' house.

Chewing - x post with you.

Yes I agree. Costs definitely have 'morphed' in our case.

Costs always escalate.

I would also be worried about other 'hidden' problems coming to light. If someone has ignored the roof & let it get into this state, it sounds as if they haven't looked after their property. Are the electrics OK? How old is the boiler? Are the drains & guttering OK?

And the bottom line is how upset would you be not to get this house?

'If someone has ignored the roof & let it get into this state, it sounds as if they haven't looked after their property'

Exactly my thoughts. I'd be quite worried about this tbh.

MoreBeta I hope you get it all sorted. Buying houses is such a minefield.

I'm not sure it's as simple as the previous owner 'ignoring a roof & letting it get into a state'
Victorian & Edwardian slate roofs will all be coming to the end of their lives and will come up on surveys as the life of slate is approx 100yrs give or take. This doesn't mean the previous owner has had a problem with it or it's leaking but it will come up on a survey as requiring replacement as it has come to the end of it's life span and is more likely to have a problem sometime in the near future even though it's currently watertight.
With surveys you need to look at the additional information not just the headline issue as this can be alarming especially for the average householder. Why does the roof require replacement? - what do you mean by replacement (complete overhaul Inc timbers, re-slating, fixing slipped tiles/slates, leaks)
Were the problems obvious when you made the offer prior to the survey? Anything that was obvious at this stage you can't really renegotiate on. New things arising from the survey give you scope for renegotiation in some circumstances.
Is it work you would do anyway? How much do they want to sell? How much do you want to buy? Is this work likely to be the tip of an iceberg with other work?
The new house we are buying needs a new boiler & new windows but we know its been generally well maintained so we have no problem doing this work. (we offered with this in mind)

Whole house needs 25k of work, waiting to hear if vendors will budge on price!