What to do regarding survey

[LadyGAgain]

The house move saga continues. Accepted offer after first one fell through 8 weeks into the process (not us or our house related). It's taken 6 weeks for the survey to be done down to the horrendous mortgage company they have chosen. In that time we are ready to exchange on our forward purchase and our buyers have (to their credit) completed all searches and paperwork so were just awaiting their mortgage offer.
Which they received yesterday. Along with their homebuyers survey.
They have off the back of this asked for a damp survey to be undertaken and also an electrical survey/report.
We have had no reason to suspect any issues with either of these however the survey has obviously found something. Have booked both. However I would like some advice about what we do off the back of the findings. If there is recommended work do we have to do this or have to reduce the property by the sum quoted? We have already reduced by over £30k and if I look at prices in the surrounding area that are actually selling there is a £20k difference between ours (we had found somewhere and already in the conveyancing process when we lost buyer 1) and theirs.
Advice? Thanks.

Our buyers had to have a damp survey after their mortgage valuation. It didn’t seem to affect their mortgage offer. They asked for the money back, and we agreed to half of it, (£2k) but as a retention on completion. (Basically I think that means that once we’ve completed our solicitor will return £2k of the left over money from all our transactions to our buyer)
I would say you’re within your rights to say no to them asking for a reduction pointing out that your selling for less than comparable properties locally. But you will have a clearer idea of how likely they are to still go ahead.
It’s all a complete nightmare and you have my utmost sympathy.

If you reduced by over 30k it means your house was on the market for 30k too much. If you are willing to risk losimg this buyer and your onward purchase for a couple of grand then it shows how much you dont want your new house

Electrical surveys seem to recommended as a matter of course and it's probably the same with older properties and damp surveys. We didn't have an electrical survey on the basis it was an old house and we were likely going to have to rewire anyway and had building works planned.

With the damp survey I'd be very wary if they use someone offering a free survey because they always then try to sell a chemical damp proof course and if there is any damp, it's unlikely to be rising damp and the dpc won't fix the actual problem, just cover it up.

Let them do their surveys and see what comes back from them. Neither survey will necessarily result in them trying to negotiate on price and the fact you've lowered your price compared to others locally puts you in a stronger position to say no.

Thank you for your empathetic and constructive responses @wowfudge @mangocoveredlamb . Really helpful to have your knowledge and insight. It will be interesting to see what the surveyors say and good to know you can split cost and it's conditional on completion.

They have already had their full mortgage offer BTW so neither of these surveys was conditional for that.

They've been advised to have the surveys carried out then. As my DP kept saying to me when we last selling, there's no point worrying that something might happen! Easier said than done sometimes though.

Such a long (expensive) process @wowfudge that might result in absolutely nothing!!! Did you move in the end?

Yes - and the things I worried might bother our purchasers were of no concern to them at all. They weren't even mentioned.

It is not surprising that these days buyers are hyper-cautious about making a house purchase, because they are spending such a lot of money. In the olden days, when houses were much cheaper relative to incomes, people were not so cautious because it was much less of a financial risk.

That's a fair point @FabulousSophie . So the damp survey was done and he said that there's no remedial work needed and nothing to worry about. Let's hope the same for the electrical one....