How scary is this Home Buyer Report?

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Hello. We are hoping to buy a 60s house which we thought needed updating but not modernizing. We have just had the survey back and it says that the price is reasonable in the current rising market but we could negotiate a discount for the work. There are several things in the most serious ccategory including the windows and electrics.

The windows are single glazed but we had thought we could live with them until we could afford to replace them. The report says they are the original windows and that the dormer windows upstairs are rotten.

This is what it says about the electrics:

The mains electricity supply connects to the 2-rate meter and fuse
distribution board with replacement circuit breaker fuses, all
inconveniently located at the back of a kitchen cupboard. Visible wiring is in standard pvc insulated materials and standard range fittings are in use. No obvious faults were seen but it is recommended that electrical systems are checked at least at 10-yearly intervals. Therefore the system should be inspected by a qualified electrician and any recommended work should be completed.

We have already offered 250K when the original asking price was £260K. We are in an area which is a sellers market so I'm not sure if we will get a further discount. We are going to have very little money for work so I'm not sure if we are really in a position to buy this house now. I do really like it and don't envision moving again any time soon.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

This survey was a private survey and the mortgage valuation is separate. We have a 15% deposit and are going for a 5 year fix. I guess we could try for a 10% deposit on a shorter term and free up £12.5K and hope the value would rise.... We are up against time as well as our original purchase fell through and we need to complete asap before our buyers mortgage runs out as they think they may not get a new one due to change in circumstances. Starting to think we are never going to move - accepted an offer on our house last November!

Normal.

Nothing you can't live with for the next 5-10 years.

I think these reports often suggest an inspection by a qualified electrician. If you know one, its worth having a quick look with him. That said, there will be costs to pay in the house that you haven't idea about yet so a contingency for this, and other expense, would be wise.

You can always ask for a discount. They can only say no, and if you have a buyer in place and can move quickly, you are in a good position.

We had a survey on our 10 year old house. It said that the electrics would need to be checked by a qualified electrician.
Think it's standard cover your arse stuff. :)

Electrics all sounds quite normal:

inconveniently located at the back of a cupboard well where else would they be??

No obvious faults were seen surveyor just had a look, it looks OK but is covering arse

system should be inspected by qualified electrician surveyor is not electrician and is covering arse

(I do some work for surveyors occasionally. They have to add these sorts of things to cover themselves)

Good luck!

Sounds pretty normal to me.
Single glazing you knew about so is not really negotiable. How rotten are the frames? On a previous property our buyers wanted to negotiate following a survey that said the door frames were rotten and needed complete replacement. In fact only one had damage. It was the original Victorian front door frame and the damage was less than a square inch of frame in the bottom corner. We fixed it with some elbow grease, cutting in new wood, filling and repainting. We went past the other day and guess what 9yrs down the line and it's still fine. The survey was overkill.
Pretty much all surveys recommend getting electrics checked.

Thanks for the replies and a bit of perspective. The fuse box is at the back of a corner kitchen cabinet so is inconvenient but not something I would negotiate on. I guess we did know about the single glazing so guess it's right it might be difficult to negotiate just because it is in worse condition (the sills did look dodgy when we viewed). Other things that were category 3 were couple of loose tiles where birds had nested and partially blocked drainage. The central heating was highlighted too as boiler is over 10 years but I'm ok about that. The survey for the previous house recommended an electric check but was only highlighted as a category 2 risk.

I think I am just worried as he has recommended negotiating the price which makes me think we offered too much. It's a good sized house in a nice location though and I could easily see someone with a better budget being willing to pay the same for it as we offered. Will just have to live off beans on toast for the next 5 years!

offer the lower price if you like. They will accept or refuse. Then you decide what to do.

sounds like normal surveyor backside covering to me.

What did the surveyor say about the value?

The things noted in the survey sound unimportant/ not urgent and wouldn't put me off.

Have you got a mortgage offer in place? If so, and with "only" a 15% deposit in place I wouldn't risk re-applying and possibly being turned down. Only you know if you can afford the house.

I saw this on the MSE website which might be worth bearing in mind:

The reality of 90% mortgages

According to experts, the vast majority of mortgage applicants with the minimum 10% deposit are turned down as, regardless of what banks and building societies advertise, the loans are still considered high risk and lenders want to limit their exposure to this.

David Hollingworth at broker London & Country, said: "Just because a lender says it offers a 90% mortgage, doesn't mean it has to give it to you. There are still very few deals available at that borrowing level which means criteria are especially tight."

Whether you are shown the red or green light for your 10% deposit, will hinge mainly on your credit score. But, while the big banks will access your credit report from one or more of the UK's credit reference agencies, they also employ their own scoring system to run alongside it - and this is the main problem first-timers face, says Hollingworth.

"Not only do credit scoring models vary between lenders, applicants never get to see them so the process is not at all transparent. What's more, the lender doesn't have to explain why it has turned you down - it's enough that you simply don't meet its own level of credit score for that application."

ooops, sorry, moneysupermarket website and it's a fairly old article (Jan last year) but still, best to talk to a broker before entertaining looking for a 10% deposit mortgage.

Thanks for the replies. The idea of going for a 10% was a bit of musing to be honest. We don't have a high deposit but we are moving from a 18 year term to a 30 year term so our mortgage payments will stay roughly the same. We haven't had our mortgage approved yet but we had mortgage approved for the same amount 6 months ago with the same building society and we've both had pay rises since then. It would be a high risk approach but I was thinking we could try for the 10% deposit and get a 2 year deal and then remortgage with hopefully a higher value house at a better LTV. I don't think high risk is a good strategy for us now though as we are TTC and need fixed costs for a while (we'll have a very small period where we have 2 DC in FT childcare so costs should be manageable).

However, we bought our current house with a 10% deposit in 2009 when every single article in the news was saying that FTBers needed 25% to get a mortgage and it seemed quite straightforward (this however was before DS and for a lower amount). We're only 3 years into home ownership so don't have much equity and our original deposit was saved by ourselves (we were both students for way too long in our 20s and neither of us have parents who could help us out) .

The valuation did come back as £250K but in the text it said while it was a reasonable price we could maybe negotiate a discount. Thanks again for all the comments.

Not overly concerning tbh.

I think that is a good survey if that is all it revealed. If you are in a seller's market and adore the house etc I would not risk getting the Seller's back up. What if they say no and re market... Would they get higher now?

Having said that I am a cr@p negotiator.

If it needed a total rewire, new boiler, new roof etc yes of course, get quotes and try but rotten windows you could have noticed yourself would be my viewpoint as the seller. Oldish boiler the same. Nothing screams out renegotiate it is just all life cycle maintenance.

When you say you had a mortgage approved, do you mean full mortgage offer or an agreement in principle? It's worth bearing in mind that the AIP doesn't really amount to much and we (and many others we know) had AIPs that did not translate into mortgage offers. What an old eyeore I'm being, sorry: I feel your pain completely about living in an expensive area eyes northern relatives jealously

Be aware that any childcare costs will be taken into account in the affordability calculation. This affected what we could borrow quite substantially. Getting your next mortgage now rather than later, though, is a good move - once baby no 2 comes along, your income will presumably go down and childcare go up (I am making lots of assumptions here!!!).

I do mean full mortgage offer. We had been in a chain since November and were just waiting for our sellers to get everything sorted (which never happened). Everything you've said is valid though - we went through L&C to find a mortgage lender who would lend us the amount we needed and are going with a building society who lends on salary multiples rather than affordability as we would be a bit short on most high street calculations. I don't think we are being irresponsible though as by extending our term we are keeping payments about the same and should be past paying extortionate amounts for childcare at the end of the 5 year fix.

Moving before baby number 2 is a big reason for the timing of the move. It is all slightly terrifying and I can tell my northern brother is concerned at how much our house will cost. I regret not stretching ourselves more when we bought 3 years ago though and we are in a part of the country where demand makes it a fairly ok bet..... Fingers crossed anyway.