Can anyone offer any advice? Or tell me some stories if it happened to you?
Long story....... we sold stc our house 7 weeks ago to FTB. We wanted quick sale so dropped price at EA advice by 15k after 1 week (this was our lowest price we could accept and made ours the cheapest of its kind on the market, EA would make buyers aware we wont accept any lower) we thought the price drop would reflect some work that may be needed such as a new kitchen (small kitchen so 5k max) and to avoid negotiating further down the line.
So after valuation and homebuyers survey, buyer comes round with a builder, a week later they want a damp survey done. Fair enough, it shows they are serious and are covering themselves as its a 1930's property, feeling good they are having things checked at an early stage.
So-called damp surveyor turns up 2 hours before appointment time, insists it's rising damp before he even gets his damp meter out. All he does is go around the walls with a damp meter above the skirting and says that 2 walls and the bay window are wetter than the rest of the house, he says its so minor we dont have any visual evidence of it. Says about 2k to fix and after a 10 minute survey off he went.
A week later EA call to say our buyers want 4k off the price to cover the cost to fix damp (the quote they received has doubled and so has number of walls that need treatment)
I am completely taken aback by this so advised the EA exactly what the surveyor did and also advised that we researched the company who did the survey and they are a company that sell damp course treatments and offer a free survey, so i was very wary of them pulling a fast one like this.
I asked the EA are they aware we have already dropped the price by 15k to which he said yes, other small niggly things came up on the homebuyers report which you expect on a property of this age but they are willing to overlook them but they are concerned about the damp and feel that the cost of damp should be taken off as no one expected it to come up!
Great, so now they are defending their decision to drop price by 15k when we said 10k initially so that would have given us 5k to negotiate with later. We have now arranged for an independent damp specialist at £250 to attend our property soon in the hope he can prove for us that the other company are just a con.
We feel so angry at the EA but even more so that the buyers think it is acceptable to demand 4k of on the basis of the quote which has a sentence saying they found rising damp because we dont have a damp course at present, 2 pages in the report goes on about their products!