Advice needed: Buying house of landlord

[user1473756940]

We have been renting our current home for three years. a 3 bed terraced house. It was not in a great state when we started renting it, a bit tired looking and not had a lot done to it for a while. For example, carpets down to their underlay, 1970's radiators and gas fire, ancient boiler. When we moved in, the landlord did say these are things she was going to address asap. 3 years down the line, none of that work has been done, we didn't really push her for it as we didn't want to rock the boat too much. The other week, one of the radiator pipes rotted and broke and caused a leak. We paid for an emergency plumber to come out and fix the leak. A week later, we are given 3 months notice to be out the house as she has decided to sell and move away.

We had been looking to buy a house in the near future and she has said she would consider an offer from us. The house was valued yesterday and she has agreed an asking price of £136,500, she won't disclose to me the valuation figure. Based on the fact in selling to us she will cut out estate agents fees, and the fact we know significant work needs doing on the house immediately which would have to come out of our pocket if we bought it, and the £20,000 she has had out of us in rent over three years, whilst carrying out no maintenance on the property, would an offer of £118,000 be unreasonable?

We are able to make a deposit of up to £10,000 as a loan from my parents and we think we will get a mortgage.

If you rent through an agent then she may have to pay fees anyway.

That't not true. I've bought from my landlord in the past and there were no agency fees for the seller.

It's in the contract I signed with the agent who manages my property - although that was a decade ago so may have changed. I don't know if it is enforceable as we haven't sold.

We have done some further research as the average house price for the street is somewhat misleading as one side of the street is terraced (our side) and the other side is semi detached. We looked at 3 properties which have sold since 2016 in a similar condition to ours i.e. needs work and modernisation and none of these have sold for over £120,000.

We are making an offer today of £118,000 which I fully expect to be turned down as a first offer and we are willing to go higher. I have also asked her if she is able to give us a bit more info/disclosure on how they have reached the agreed asking price of £136,500, for example I don't know if she has agreed to carry out some of the work that needs doing prior to it going on the market.

That all sounds very reasonable. Fingers crossed for you.

Our offer of £118,000 has been turned down.

She has in turn offered £128,000 and she undertakes some work, replaces patio door and flushes the heating system.

Or £124,000 and she does no work and its all down to us.

The work she proposes doing doesn't amount to £4,000 so she wants to snap her hands off with the lower offer.

Is it just me or she just downright con artist to try and get an extra £4,000 towards the asking price off us by doing some work that she should have done during our tenancy??

If I were you I would get some contractors in to price the jobs for you before going any further. So that you have a negotiating tool.
Would you trust her to get the work done, considering she has been so crap up until now?

If the boiler and radiators are that old, flushing the system won't go a thing.

Are you going to counter offer?

In the nicest possible way you need to lose some of the emotion from this (and I know it's hard).

It doesn't really matter now what she has or hasn't done as a landlord. You're now looking at something different. What is the price at which you are prepared for someone else to have the house? Does £124k fall within that?

Basically, if you'd be kicking yourself if she sells to someone else for £124 tomorrow then you should probably just go for it. In the grand scheme of house buying 2-3k is nothing.

I have gathered a few quotes and the work she is offering to do doesn't come anywhere near the £4,000 she would add to the sale price if she undertook it herself. We will probably, go back with an offer pf £122,000 whereby we do all the work, if we buy the house we would plan to replace all the radiators as well as the boiler, rather than just flushing them, but we may do that as short-term measure until we can afford to replace everything.

I get what you mean about trying to lose the emotion, and it is hard. However, we are still under the tenancy agreement until September, I am still paying rent to her, and the jobs we are talking about I brought to her attention as my landlord over six months ago, so I just think its a flipping cheek to bring things she should have done, and under the current contract, should still be doing, into the equation.

Bear in mind that your offer is now so close to the price she has offered that a couple of months more negotiation would probably wipe out the difference through extra rent paid while reaching an agreement. If you can pin her down to completing quickly by paying slightly more it may be worth it.