How much to reduce offer? Subsidence and other things

[Woozlebear]

2 months into house purchase and going mad! Need advice!

So when we viewed house it looked dated but immaculate and very well maintained. Asking price 695. Bidding against anther couple and our offer of 680 got accepted. So far so good. During conveyancing we have discovered:

1. It suffered subsidence and was underpinned 17 years ago. Survey has said ok now but is basically uninsurable other than specialists or continuing current insurer. Allowing for average inflation, the insurance alone will cost us 10k extra over life of mortgage compared with same house without subsidence history. There's also the resale worry - I know a lot of people just walk away from properties like this so will we suffer when selling on? We also need structural engineers report and want vendor to pay and they're refusing but that's another story.

1. Boiler is decades old and has never been serviced. It's of an unusual type that particularly needs regular servicing. I have been here before and spent 5k in the first week of moving in! We feel we have to assume it's a write off. To complicate, pipes are all microbor which will probably blow under pressure of new boiler, and in half the house are buried in solid floor so new pipes will need to be rerun under upstairs floors and then boxed in. Whole job will cost about 10k.

1. Chimney needs repair and due to scaffolding required we have been told to allow 2k. If we included clearing the roof of moss and which survey said should 'ideally' be done, plus potential need for overhauling gutters which are showing signs of overflow in bad weather, this would be 5k, but accept the latter is probably pushing it.

1. The garden is not as big as estate agent told us at the viewing. It's a very odd garden and a lot of it is basically. There's no rear boundary fence and it backs onto open ground so we were entirely dependent on what the agent told us. It was no misunderstanding- we asked very specifically as it was v important to us, and his answers were very clear and detailed. But wrong. The difference is a few metres off the length, which doesn't sound much but the shape of garden means it's the difference between having one usable flat area and two. In a garden that is already small and very oddly shaped for the size of house, this is a real disappointment for us. Obv difficult to put a value on this.

We're planning to reduce our offer but struggling to know how much to try for. Any advice / experience appreciated!

I would walk from a house like that !

I'd walk too. You can bet there are all sorts of other problems lurking if they've been both dishonest and haven't maintained the house

I would also walk away, imo even if you did negotiate money off the purchase price the garden would always bother you

Unless it's in a fantastic desirable location I would withdraw. Agree with all PP.

I would walk away too. There are just too many major issues. And agree with oddfodd when they say there are probably a other problems lurking that you don't know about yet.

Don't bother reducing your offer, walk away! Even if the house has been priced to take account of the boiler and roof issues, the mis-measurement of the garden makes a big difference to you and the subsidence is a complete deal-breaker.

I would also walk away because I don't think you're going to get the reductions you want.

It depends on what your offer was originally, and how far the vendor has already come down, but I think all of the things you mention (from the seller's point of view) are not things that I would agree to a discount for.

The survey has said the house is now structurally sound - the cost of insurance can go up and down over the lifetime of a mortgage and £10k over say 20 or 25 years is not a massive amount. You also might find as the house gets older that insurance premiums go down etc so why would a seller be knocking the asking price down when in fact, its just an estimate and you can't know what insurance costs will be in say 5 or 10 years, nevermind 20?

You say the house was dated and that it was obvious that the boiler needed replacing - as a seller, I would say this was reflected in the initial asking price.

I also wouldn't be dropping the price to accommodate anything that was deemed as "ideal" (cleaning roof / gutters) - that's your choice as a buyer. Does chimney need immediate repair? If not, I'd say it was ongoing maintenance of the house which you should expect - am guessing its a relatively old house.

Finally the garden - the sellers did nothing wrong - it was the estate agent. I'd say I priced the house to reflect the size and useability of the garden. If you made a mistake (however that was caused) then you can drop your offer, but I wouldn't be expecting a vendor to agree to that.

Walk away. These are just the issues you know about. There are bound to be more.

Wow - walk away. No, run! Too many issues, all bad. Too many things wrong - garden especially not ideal.

I'd walk away. Why are you looking at negotiating price rather than walking away? What's the draw?

Tbh I don't think you're going to get those reductions. Is the house priced appropriately for the area or over? Either way, I would just deduct the amount that is reasonable and put that forward, with explicit instructions that this is a 'take it or leave it' offer. I'd be prepared to just walk away if you aren't willing to swallow those costs yourselves.

The subsidence/insurance issue alone would have me walking - we walked away from a house for flooding insurance reasons because we were worried about resale. The house itself had virtually no danger of flooding but was next to an area which did flood last winter (in somerset) so the insurance premiums were through the roof.
The garden issue is a biggie too, if it makes it a problem, there's nothing that can be done to resolve it (I assume). The boiler/chimney etc I'd expect in a house of a certain age - the house we are buying has a 30+ year old boiler and we are expecting to replace it pretty quickly.

Wow- so many people saying walk away! What's the draw? It's the the only house we've found in years that ticks our key boxes- commutable, in catchment of outstanding primary, footpaths and green space from back door.

Mandy it wasn't obvious when we offered that boiler was so old- I'm not a boiler expert! Or that it had never ever been serviced and was thus in a very bad state.

We are in the process (exchange hopefully in the next couple of days) of buying a house with subsidence, new roof, drains leaking, full rewire etc. so you totally have my sympathies. Fortunately we knew so it wasn't a shock and our offer was based on the work that needed doing. Shock or not you have every right to say that based on the results of the survey you need to change your offer.

On the subsidence issue our very reliable builder told me that houses that have had the subsidence fixed are the best ones to buy because the work has been done to them. Our insurance costs will be only slightly higher but we don't need to go with a specialist provider so it might be worth having another look, we used Nationwide who provide our mortgage.

I agree with what everyone else has said about the garden and being prepared to walk away but just to add...one area of cost you haven't listed and might be worth thinking about is temporary accommodation costs. We need ours totally rewired which sounds like a similar scale to having everything re-plumbed) and we need to pay for a rental for a few weeks whilst the house isn't liveable in.

It's also worth considering the stress of taking on a project, we haven't even moved in yet and already ours feels like it's taken over my life, definitely worth considering if you can put a price on that. Good luck!

I'd be getting a couple of quotes for building insurance right now, so you know what you're letting yourself in for. The subsidence itself isn't a problem if it's been sorted some time ago, but the insurance issue won't go away so best to find out now so it's not a huge shock later on (if you proceed).

I've just had a chimney repaired on my 4 storey Victorian house - it had to have scaffolding put up and then a couple of hours' work to repoint and put a cap on the chimney. Total cost £850. That was one chimney - the other stacks look ok, so they won't need looking at for a while.

You need to do some research to see what similar houses (if there are any) go for in the local area. Compare condition, size, location etc etc and see where your house fits in the general scheme of things. The vendors should have priced it to take account of the condition and lack of maintenance, but equally with an older house, you know it's not going to be pristine and low-maintenance. There are always things that need doing and you will keep throwing money at it. (Voice of experience.)

Once you've got an idea of whether it's priced realistically, then think about replacing the heating system. Get 2 or 3 quotes and then put all your figures together and see how it looks. The heating will need to be done straight away and I would think about knocking off at least the whole cost of that from your original offer price.

But only you know if you're prepared to take it on. The garden isn't really an issue, just the agent talking it up. That's a case of take it or leave it.

Thanks Suzy. As it happens this would be our third project so well prepared for the hideousness. Luckily it's also big enough that we would live in while stuff was done. We've dismissed other houses that would have been too difficult layout wise etc to live through. We have animals so temp accommodation difficult. Although house is top of budget really, so we won't be doing anything other than essentials any time soon!

Re subsidence, yes I'm happy with it structurally but feel that since it didn't come to light until later, the price should surely reflect it. It's the resale aspect that worries me most.

It's not an old house, btw, 1980s. But has more issues than edwardian houses I've bought!! Because of it's age I don't see these as 'to be expected'.

I was going to say microbore pipes were popular in the 80's. I think they became unpopular because they bend easily, so prone to leaks etc.

It sounds as if you want the house, so all you can do is to try to re-negotiate if you want to proceed, knowing these issues. No-one can really predict whether you're being reasonable without knowing the market, how much the seller has dropped etc, so can't know how the seller will respond. It might be that s/he is prepared to make some deductions if they're desperate to sell / house has been on the market for a long time / don't want to lose a purchase.

Asking price was 695. Offer was 680, it was on the market for a few weeks before we offered. Price hasn't been dropped so far because of any of these issues, and it certainly wasn't marketed as needing modernisation, new heating etc. Our impression was that we would want to update cosmetically. The agent in fact has made repeated efforts to tell us how exacting the sellers are and how well maintained the house is.

Sorry missed that in your original post. If it was only on for a few weeks, and you were in a bidding war, the vendor / EA might think its a popular property and there is no need to reduce price any more - if they refuse and you walk away, someone else will be ready to step in??

On top of that, he's already agreed to a £15k reduction.

Sounds like vendor has more negotiating power than you do unfortunately. But like I said, you can but try !

I don't think the original 15k reduction means much- nothing much where we're looking seems to go for quite asking. It was hard to get used to as we're familiar with London market where everything goes over!

Also, not directly relevant but def affects our feelings. We've already taken a 25 reduction on the house we are selling as the to of the chain bullied and threatened us mercilessly to jump ship to our third best offer because they wanted the bottom of the chain to be in the best possible position to move quickly- which hadn't now even happened!!! Not our vendors fault, but their agent was the one personally feeding the ultimatums to me, and the up shot is we have less than no wiggle room now and are able to swallow absolutely no extra expense / risk.

How did you get on OP?