To (re) negotiate purchase price? London and Brexit uncertainty

[bottleitup]

Tdlr; our offer was accepted in mid/late October. £890k, 3/4 bed terrace house, zone 1/2 London location. Our "forever home", we hope. In early December we negotiated £15k off due to survey findings.

There's since been some delay on exchanging due to timing of paperwork on the seller's end and the time it's taken us to exchange on the sale of our existing property.

I'm having cold feet about the price we are paying due to how Brexit shambles is turning out and the fact is we may need to spend close to £150-200k over the next 5 years to modernise the property (can't move into it as it stands).

Would it be unreasonable of me to go back to ask for additional money off, given current market conditions mean we may be overpaying?

You’ve already got a bargain. Don’t be greedy.

You can’t beat the property market in London, a house is worth what someone is willing to pay for it...you can always ask for less but you’ll need a better reason than brexit and if I was the seller I’d tell you to get lost!

JoJo and Minipie
Yes, obviously, but that's extending it and making it into a different kind of house! No need to state the obvious!!

Here we have an op pleading poverty, when infact she's not just trying to make the house habitable, she is planning to upgrade the life out of it. The two are not the same thing. I doubt the current owner gives a stuff about what she's planning to do with the house. It is not up to him or her to fund her kitchen island and underfloor heating.

Presumably you will reduce the price of the house you are selling by the same percentage?

Agree bibbity. My point was more a warning to the OP that if she wants all those extensions etc it’s likely to cost her more than £200k. If that is a problem, she should walk away. Not renegotiate - a small price renegotiation isn’t going to make a dent in the house reno costs.

If you tried this with me I'd put it straight back on the market until you exchanged. You don't know if they've already been through this process before (they could have been with another agent) - there are a lot of people messing around at the moment and I think a lot of vendors are very cautious about wasting their time. Agree with pp who said if you want this house then think very carefully.

If I was the seller, I'd also put it back on the market if you tried that with me-LOndon prices won't crash 'because of Brexit' ( which you've known about for a couple of years) massively IMO as people will always want to live in London-renting or buying.

The house is worth what it is at the time of valuing, if you worried about every little thing affecting house prices you'd never buy anything!

As long as the valuation was the same as the price you're paying then it's worth it.

If it's your forever house and you expect to live in it 10+ years then Brexit uncertainty shouldn't make any difference - and certainly nothing has changed since October. And you knew how much you would need to spend on it to bring it to your desired standard so that should not be a consideration at all now, you already got a discount after your survey.

Are you in a chain? If so you could lose your sale as well, you have to balance that risk.

Depends how much you want the house. I’ve recently been selling and my vendor wasn’t really negotiating in good faith and we were worried they would try and drop the price again before exchange so we told them to do one. You were fine to renegotiate on the back of the survey but to do it again risks you losing the sale altogether.

Gosh I hope my house buyer is not like you
I would tell you to shove it up where the sun don't shine