Survey advice

[Laineymc7]

Hi all. We had an offer accepted on a lovely house.
The survey came to say the roof needs repairing. We hadn’t considered this. We are going to get a quote to establish costs. We don’t have loads extra to do the house up.

What is reasonable after getting a quote would you ask if the sellers could pay, pay half as it would come up in another survey or would you not. I’m not sure if this is cheeky? I don’t want to mess them around. We aren’t going to ask for money of purchase price but would like the roof repaired.

Depends what repairs are required. If it’s “there are some cracked tiles” then I would tell you that the house is sold as seen. If it’s a serious leak that has caused roof timbers to fail then I might be more inclined to negotiate.

What repairs? If it is several thousand £, then try and negotiate money off. Surveys usually find something. If it is few hundred £, and negligible, then you get the repairs done after you move in.

They might say the price of the repair has been factored into the asking price of course.

The survey will say at the end of it what the value is taking account of the repairs (or say agreed sale price is reasonable / too high). If it says "house is worth 200k" and your accepted offer is £200k then it's cheeky to ask vendors to knock money off. However if survey says "house is worth £195k" bearing in mind it's condition etc then it's reasonable to negotiate with the vendor.

Bear in mind an older house will often need roof repairs and the asking price may already reflect that.

Thanks all. I’m booking a roofer to give me an estimate so I know what the costs are. The survey mentioned the flat roof may need totally replacing and some other main roof issues such as flashings fixing, repointing, work to be done to the chimney etc. If it’s not going to cost that much and not need replacing I wouldn’t say anything and just sort it ourselves. Just wanted to know what the done thing was. Thank you

If the surveyor did not inspect the flat roof then of course it MAY need replacing.

Flashing, tiles, repointing and the like are pretty common- if I was selling to you I’d say that it’s sold as is. Total cost of repair will probably be less than £1,000- a day or two’s work at best.

Surveyors will always say some things MAY need looking at but doesnt mean anything needs doing now. Our previous house still had the original roof with no felting under the tiles and the survey suggested the roof might need replacing at some point - this was in 1994. We did some roof repairs whilst we were there but the original roof is still going strong now in 2018!