Advice please - buyer wants to carry out a 2 hour 'informal' survey!

[Sarahlouboo]

Is it weird?! We agreed a price back in January, everything seems to be falling in to place nicely, just waiting for their mortgage offer. The house is relatively new (7 years) so still covered under building regs. The estate agent called yesterday and asked if the buyer and his friend (who is a builder) could come around and inspect the property, in lieu of a full survey being carried out. They said they would need up to 2 hours to do this! I could understand if they had done this at the time of offer or immediately before but I am a bit flummoxed (and suspicious) as to why they want to do this now, just as we are getting geared up to talking about exchanging contracts. The estate agent said we have nothing to hide so not to worry. AIBU? We have agreed of course, we are not aware of any problems although I am a bit grrr at having to arrange my weekend around this/clean the house with a hangover!

If I am ever selling a house in future I am going to insist on proof of mortgage suitability first. The last house I sold they strung me along for 8 months and then tried getting me to drop the price as they couldn't get a mortgage for the agreed price. It's made me suspicious now...

As far as informal survey - a builder's opinion would hold no weight with tbh...

AuntieDee - I thought that was the norm now to be honest? We had to show that we had a mortgage in principle before the sale could be instructed. So frustrating when people string you along. We had a similar problem with our last vendors - after 5 months they couldn't decide wether to sell or rent .

Right, they have just left and they were so lovely. It really was more of a pre-moving in exciting times type viewing! So much for a two hour survey! Mind you, our EA is a complete arsehole, it wouldn't surprise me if he had just been winding me up! I will be amazed if they come back and lower the offer, it was all very positive and she explained again why there had been a delay with the mortgage and it didn't seem unreasonable (basically her employers didn't supply relevant info for ages). Phew! Sorry for wasting your time!

Hope it's not a worse case scenario for you OP, although you're fortunate to have your colleague waiting in the wings, so to speak if it is.....

Just to say though, that the last three times we've purchased (sans mortgage) we've taken an expert round to look at the houses we've offered on (post offer) in lieu of any form of survey in order to establish the rough costings of what we hope to do - these were all major project houses btw. We certainly didn't attempt to negotiate the price down afterwards.

Fingers crossed for you x

Sorry, I hadn't read your last post before posting....glad it went well!

Glad to hear it went well! I think most people probably aren't sharks, perhaps Estate Agents assume the worst because they are

Having said that, the EA we're buying through actually suggested to us that we go look around just before exchange (which we're doing as well as the survey) just so we could measure up and so on. It never occurred to me that this was something we could ask to do as we never did it with other houses!