Attempted to negotiate price after survey but instead got gazumped. How to recover?

[miggles33]

After our survey we attempted to negotiate on the price. The seller did not budge. So we accepted this and agreed to continue. Enjoyed Christmas then found out that in the meantime they have gone back to another buyer who had been lingering and accepted a higher offer. So we have been gazumped. All fees paid for and close to exchange. I guess there is nothing we can do? How does anyone recover from this. We totally love the house but stupidly thought we could negotiate with problems in survey. We are nearly a year into this now and I want to give up. Uggghh.

Oh, I'm sorry that you are feeling bad, OP.

House buying is a difficult process.

Can you call the agent and say that, if the new sale were to fall through, you would still be interested at the original agreed price? That's about all you can do for that place, really.

Give yourselves a couple of days rest from it and then throw yourselves back into the hunt for a great new home. You will find it.

Is it typical to renegotiate after a survey?

I've bought and sold plenty of times and never done it, or had it done.

There will always be work needing done on a house, particularly older houses. I always budget that into my offer, it's usually fairly obvious how well the house is maintained.

The survey confirms what i need to get done, and how urgently. But it's main purpose is structural integrity.

I'd only renegotiate if there were very serious issues with the property that a felt affected the value so much it would be a deal breaker on me buying it. So if i felt i couldn't proceed with the purchase unless the issues were accounted for.

Anyone trying to renegotiate with me i'd assume the same, that the issues were so major they'd rather not proceed with the sale at the current offer.

£6k is relatively small change in the scale of house buying. The fact that you continued with the purchase at your original offer would make me think the survey wasn't bad enough to affect the house price, and you were chancing your arm. I'd be worried you would try again even closer to exchange.

I've been gazumped it's shit. I'm not sure why people think you got what you deserved there is absolutely nothing wrong with renogiating a price after a survey, otherwise why would anyone bother getting a survey?

If you were still in agreement on price and proceeding with the sale then the sellers broke the agreement and have no place on the moral high ground.

Sorry this has happened. I think the whole housebuying system needs to be changed really.

What is the point of making an offer, which is then accepted (when there may have been other offers but the vendor has perhaps chosen you because you have less of a chain, or seem more reliable), but then the price is 're-negotiated' after the survey. So the price offered was never the price one intended to pay anyway. It makes a mockery of it. We could all wade in there and offer well over asking price just to get the vendor to agree to pick us as the buyer, before we 're-negotiate' the price.

Is it Scotland where the vendor gets the survey done and then all offers are based on the survey and no further negotiation allowed?

Hope you find another house, and that it all works out. Housebuying is the most horrible process in England.

Op -what a tough situation. I agree that negotiations after the survey can happen but I don't think it is that common in practice as all along the chain, people have made decisions about their prices. It's hard to unravel and negotiate at a later stage.
All surveys make houses sound dreadful. They are never optimistic. Ie brand new decoration would get described as "adequate"etc. I don't know if you did this or not but I've always found it helpful speaking to the surveyor after reading the report. My last one said "immediate" work needed but he said after speaking to him that it could wait a couple of years! That was critical after ploughing all our savings (bar a small contingency) into the purchase price.

Just what zebra said. It's a hard learning point. Surveyors have to cover their backs.

My survey came back with loads of scary stuff on it and I panicked and phoned they surveyor. He laughed and said that he had to point everything out but it was in great shape for a Victorian house.

Good luck with your search. We ended up with a better house than the one we first wanted.

I dont see that anyone has done anything wrong. Buyer made offer, did survey, found big problems, lowered offer. Seller has found someone apparently prepared to pay more. So the bleaters here think the seller should accept less? What would you do?

Other threads show that buying a house in scot-topia is also loads of hassle.

Pujana, the point of a survey is to assess the structure of the building. That's it, its purpose is not to enable the buyer to put in a lower offer. Yes, that might happen afterwards, but that is not its purpose.

The OP offered a reduced amount and the vendor said no. They were not in agreement on price. At that point, there was no deal on the table because the OP had taken the original deal off the table.

The vendor is perfectly at liberty to try to sell his house to anyone else at that point.

That's the risk you take with trying to negotiate the price down. As many others have said on this thread.

I don't understand why PP are giving you should a hard time OP. I thought it was normal to renegotiate after a survey, especially if things were found during the survey. It's happened to pretty much everyone I know who has bought or sold.
One - my in laws were gazundered by the buyers of their last place. The buyer waited til the day before to say on reflection he didn't like the access from the public footpath to the back of the house and dropped the price by 8K. As the house was only 55 K to start with and he'd had the surveys for a few weeks it was a pretty awful trick to pull.

If I were you, I'd walk away and start again.

special, I also agree that neither party is particularly in the wrong.

It is okay for the OP to try to reduce the price (while understanding that doing so might lose her the house) and it is okay for the vendor to look elsewhere when the original deal was off the table.

The OP gambled and lost.

But the vendor may also have gambled and lost. The new sale hasn't happened yet. These other folks might not be able to get a mortgage or may have offered on a number of houses and will pull out of this one further down the line.

We've experienced this. We went on to buy a better house fairly quickly.

Of course people re-negotiate after survey - where the survey shows up structural or serious problems that weren't obvious on viewing and wouldn't have been expected in that age of house, if reasonably maintained. Sounds like OP's experience is exactly this.

In our case, the house hadn't been maintained, things not checked or replaced. There were rotten joists, damp and some other things that required immediate repair. We'd have had to do them before moving in, as lots of floors needed to come up, so delaying moving by a couple of months. Costed the work and delay at £14k gave sellers the costings, they declined to negotiate, we'd offered high already, so we walked away.

They were in no real hurry to sell and didn't seem to understand that houses need to be maintained. They'd been there 30+ years. They saw other houses in their street, in tip top condition, go for a certain price and thought theirs was worth the same. It wasn't. I saw it back on the market two years later, don't know if it they managed to sell it that time.

There were lots of other things we'd have wanted to change or update with that house but they were visible and some were about our preferences, not necessity, so we'd taken account of those before offering of course.

The house we bought had it's own problems (major issue that didn't show up in our survey, sued surveyor, won) but, is essentially a better house (South-facing garden, better location etc).

I completely agree with reallyanotherone having bought and sold a fair bit.

In addition, unless I was desperate to sell, I would drop a buyer who renegotiated after initial offer unless the survey results were totally unexpected. I have in the past chosen a lesser offer from buyers who seemed nicer and less 'hassle' than the higher bidders.

What I find surprising about your approach is that you went back to full offer price, rather than walking away. Either the house is worth that to you or it isn't. Either the repairs are urgent and you can pay for them, or they aren't.

On the one hand I completely understand what you've done - tried a very reasonable negotiation, failed, then decided you'd rather buy this one at full price then find another anyway. But, I also understand the seller thinking you're flaky - because you came back at full price, not because you tried to negotiate.

As a seller, reliability is all. An unreliable buyer with a higher offer is worth nothing if they don't complete.

The hard lesson is, that if you really, really wanted this house and could absorb the cost of repairs, you should have made that decision quietly and stuck with your original offer, rather than scaring the seller. If you start a negotiation you must be prepared to walk away if your terms are not met. Otherwise it's a plea, from a powerless position, not a negotiation.

House sales are not a fair, logical process, they are about feelings and perceptions.

Anyway, good luck with your next one!

There is every chance the new buyers will pull out/offer lower after they get a survey. If you love the house you could tell the estate agent to contact you if this happens. House buying is so stressful but I do think sometimes it's worth swallowing your pride to get a house you love

The question you should have asked yourself OP is, is it worth the risk of losing the house in order to save £6k?
Obviously it partly depends on how big a % of the price that is, which will vary wildly around the country so it's hard to guess.
But given the cost of fees and the hassle of starting from scratch I'd expect a lot of buyers to decide that £6k was something they'd take on the chin in order to ensure the sale went through.

Your position is hard to understand given that you tried to knock the £6k off but then backed down quickly. It makes it look as though you were trying it on. As a seller it would make me lose faith in you as a buyer.
In my experience of the English property market trust can make a big difference between having a sale go smoothly and having a sale turn into a complete nightmare, because exchange of contracts comes at such a late stage you are both relying on trust and plain dealing up to that point.
If as a seller I felt there were other potential buyers out there then your attempt to negotiate at a late stage would make me seriously consider whether I wanted to do business with you I'm afraid.

I hope you find an equally nice property soon and manage to have a quick and easy purchase process this time.

Every place I've ever offered on has been with the offer subject to satisfactory survey, and most places I've sold have had changes to the offer made after survey.

If the buyer hasn't disclosed all the property's problems prior to the offer being made, it is entirely reasonable to negotiate on price once those problems come to light (particularly if they've tried to hide the problems as one of our sellers did). It's laughable for buyers to be offended by this.

It's not 'dicking around'. It's an entirely normal part of the process and I'm in a perennially 'hot' sellers' market. I've known a lot of deals to fall apart or change at survey stage. Survey stage is also not a 'late' stage and it's entirely a myth that the survey will confirm its 'real' value - it's just whether it is mortgageable at that price.

Your sellers sound incredibly precious, as do many on this thread.

Laughable for sellers to be offended by this. Bah.

I don't understand the harsh replies. We made an offer on our house, it was accepted, had the survey, it showed extensive damp, estimated around £7k to fix it, we went back to the vendor who clearly knew there was damp and we agreed to split the difference. Of course it was up to them to agree or not to that but we weren't chancing our arms or anything. Unless I'm missing something here I don't think you've done anything wrong, op. I also don't think the vendors have a moral duty to stick with you though either, but it is a totally shit thing to happen.

It sounds like you were the one messing around no here, for starters if you are so far along the process why have you only just got your survey results in? Survey should be instructed the moment your offer is accepted, say a week to get it booked in and a few days for the report to arrive means it would be around two weeks down the line. Any more and the vendor will wonder if you're committed. Also you haven't told us what the valuation was, not the recommendations - did it still value at the price you offered? You haven't mentioned a retention from your lender so I presume the valuation was fine, so that's what it's worth.

If you're a year into this s then you're doing something wrong, in a busy market where vendors can get a new buyer straight away you need to play it straight and you didn't so they've gone with someone else. It's a hard lesson to learn, but you need to consider the law of supply and demand.

As stated above we were house hunting for a year. I instructed a surveyor within few days of an agreed offer. It took a few weeks to happen as we weren't given access to the house to get it done. I have done everything as quick as possible. There is no ongoing chain either for those who seem to think we have caused a chain to break down. It's only us who have lost out. The estate agents, vendor and gazumpers are all fine and better off.

You are allowed to feel down about it, OP. I would be too. You had planned a life in that house and now it isn't happening. It is sad for you.

Even if you hadn't tried to renegotiate the price, the vendors might still have looked for a higher offer elsewhere. Who knows?

All you can do is dust yourself off and get looking again. You will find a lovely place.

I'm sorry you are finding the process upsetting - I think house buying and selling is one of the most difficult transactions we have to do with other people. The system is by no means perfect and maybe there is a limit to what can be done to simplify what is a tricky negotiation process which relies very heavily on trust between the parties involved. Most people I believe have moral red lines that they won't cross, but everyone also has their own self interest to consider and I think both these effect the decisions people make.

I'm sorry if pps responses (including mine) have added to your stress, but people are going to see the situation from both sides, in a way which it is hard for you to do. I don't think it helps (in terms of dealing with the situation) to see other people's actions as immoral and horrible, when they are protecting their own interests in the same way you would. It is possible that your seller would have accepted a higher offer anyway, but it is more likely that you offering a lower price had some effect in sending them down that route.

I think you are being slightly disingenuous about your lower offer after the survey. Reducing your price after an offer has been agreed carries an implicit threat of pulling out if it's not accepted. (It must do, otherwise its just saying "Would you like to give me £6k out of the goodness of your heart"). So your sellers must have gone through a period of worry that, as they weren't happy to accept your lower offer, you would pull out. Okay you didn't, but at least for a time, they didn't know that. So you can't call them immoral for reconsidering the likelihood of the sale going through to completion at that point.

I don't know what % of sales fall through - huge I expect. I think they only go to completion if both parties are really committed. If I was you I wouldn't agonise any further but would chalk this up to experience.

I do think your surveyor has not helped you here, with their advice to renegotiate the price. I have bought 4 houses and sold 3, all old and all needing loads of work and have never either offered a lower price after survey or had a lower price offered. I have also never had a survey that doesn't reccomend damp work. So perhaps take any future surveyor reccomendations with a pinch of salt.

We went to sealed bids and won, then had a survey done plus electrics check which came back with 5K of repairs, which the vendors have agreed to pay for, holding back the funds so house price hasn't dropped though. We are fortunate they agreed to do so, but it's probably related to the fact we offered 10K more than the nearest bidder I suspect. But we really love the house ;)

Gazumping is crap and it's really depressing that so many on here think it's fine. It's totally normal to offer less if survey comes up with stuff (although a surveys will find something scary ime). House buying brings out the worst in people.

I bet you'll find something better - houses start coming on the market in the spring so take time to regroup and get your dream home. It will happen op.

Gazumping is crap and it's really depressing that so many on here think it's fine.

I don't think it's fine. But in this case, the buyers basically said following the survey they weren't willing to purchase at the offer price any more. So the vendors probably assumed if they didn't reduce the price they would lose the sale. So from their pov, they had rejected the lower offer, so the house was available again. They weren't to know the buyers were just trying to get a bit of money off and would go ahead with the original offer.

I think losing the sale is a risk you take if you try to negotiate following a survey. Especially if the repairs are fairly minor - there'll be other buyers.