Stupid question: Issues on survey

[TownHallDesigner]

I’m having a bit of a brain freeze and would appreciate a bit of advice, please.

I’m in Ireland, if that’s relevant.

First house purchase in a long time and the pre-purchase survey has just been completed and has highlighted some small issues that we’d like the sellers to rectify before completion.

Is this communicated by us (the buyers) to the sellers via our solicitor, or do I just inform the estate agent?

I’d go via the solicitor so it’s formally agreed.

As a side note, I’m in England but over here the done thing would be for the seller to sort out the repairs when they’ve purchased the property. If the problems and major and unexpected, eg a new roof required on a ‘done up’ house, then they’d just negotiate money off the purchase price to go towards the work.

I’ve always done that negotiation through the estate agent, as it’s normal to ask for a price reduction to complete the repairs yourself and you negotiate the price via the estate agent. People don’t want to go to the hassle of having repairs on a house they’re about to sell. It’s also likely to delay exchange if they have to wait for appointments with trades.

Thank you both.

I don’t think there’s anything that would really merit asking for a reduction.

Our interactions with the sellers so far have been very positive and they did a complete refurb before putting it on the market, so I’m hoping they’ll agree to rectify the things that would have been caught on a snag list as a goodwill gesture.

They’ve offered to complete one thing pre-survey that we wouldn’t have expected them to do at all (complete the installation of electric gates), which is lovely and very generous, so hoping they’ll be as positively disposed to the others bits too.
The house is in an area that’s quite a distance away from where we currently live and we know nobody in the area, so hoping that they’ll have easier access to tradesmen from their renovation than we would have if we were new and trying to get recommendations etc.

It’s an unusual house in a very rural location, and we’re not in a chain so I think they’re keen to hold on to us.