Survey just in! Is £330k an unusually high reinstament cost?!!

[Mama3musketeers]

Hi all.
Slight panic. Advice needed.
Our detailed homebuyers report for the house we're buying has just come in. It's valued at £840k (what we're paying) but they have estimated a 'reinstatement' cost of £330k.
Main risks were damp (which vendors had told us about previously) but also radiator, wall and ceiling issues!!
Is £330k / 40% of purchase price unusually high?! And given the newly discovered issues, is it unreasonable to ask for a slight reduction in money paid?
Really don't want to break the chain as we're so close to exchange! Aarrrghhh confused

I understood it to mean the cost of rebuilding the entire house from scratch.
I hope so anyway as our Home Buyers'
survey also came up with a figure that was a good proportion of the price we are paying!

Ah I officially feel very stupid.

That figure sounds reasonable to me. If you're looking at negotiating the price you'll be in a much better position if you get quotes for any works required, re the damp, radiators etc.

Not at all OP. I had to ask Google before I was sure

Yeah, the reinstatement is how much it would cost to actually rebuild from scratch (and what it should be insured for). Ours is actually higher than the price we paid for the house, don't know how that works!!

The reason they give you the reinstatement cost is that you will need to know it when you take out buildings insurance.

That seems low for a reinstatement cost. Ours is higher than the value of the house, although the access is poor and it's made of sandstone so it probably would cost a lot to rebuild. The reinstatement value is purely for buildings insurance purposes (hopefully!)

My reinstatement cost was about 40% of the purchase price.

Reinstatement cost will depend on a lot of things. A 6 bed 2000sqft terraced house worth £600k could easily have a higher reinstatement cost than a 6 bed 2000 sqft detached worth £900k, as the land is already paid for but terraces need to take into account potential damage to neighbouring properties.

The buildings insurance on our £60k terrace has an infinite cap because of the relative risks of things likely to damage a house being predominantly fire.

You all are super helpful. And very smart!!! Thanks so much. Any recommendations for surveyors / experts for damp, walls and ceiling assessments? I don't even know what the professional names for these roles are

Our reinstatement cost was double what we had paid for the house given the non standard construction, the age of the house and the fact that it joined two neighboring properties. It's just a value for insurance purposes, nothing to do with purchase price.

Like trixy my reinstatement cost for buildings insurance was well in excess of the purchase price, over twice the value. But it was an old building made of massive irregular granite blocks. I was told the figure was to cover the cost of demolition, removing all the materials from site, and then reinstating the building to match original condition

Reports for work need to be done by tradesmen. Your estate agent should be able to suggest people. Or I'd ask family & friends. Some people charge for things like damp reports btw. Damp is very oftje caused by thins likely blocked gutters, cracks in render, pointing etc. Which is usually a lot cheaper to fix than having a damp course done.