Home Buyer wants price reduction after survey! Help!

[Emmamortali3105]

My buyers have had a thorough building survey completed on my house and have since come back asking for a reduction in price based on what the survey says.

I’ve seen the survey and it lists damp as needing to be investigated (there are no signs of damp to the naked eye) so this is very vague. They’ve also listed that my property has a flat roof which can cause leaks (I’ve had no leaks in the 15 years living here)

The buyers who had 8% (£35,000) already off of the asking price are now saying they were surprised to know it has a flat roof (it’s a bungalow and you can see the flat roof from the garden 🤦🏻‍♀️) and that I need to get the damp sorted.

I’m desperate for this to not fall through but also cannot afford to lessen my price any more.

Has anyone been in a similar situation or have any advice please?

Thank you

Depends on the damp cost to fix really - this happened with flat we are buying - showed damp on moisture reading but not otherwise visible

We got a damp expert in to get a quote to resolve it - cost was only 1500£ so we are happy to take that on!

If they came back and said it was 10k or a huge problem we would have either pulled out or asked for reduction

The roof thing is ridiculous - they would have seen that at viewings

I’ve just had a damp specialist come over and measure the damp and he’s said that it’s non urgent but if he was to do the work it would be £1500.

I assume by a 'damp specialist' you mean a tradesmen who specialises in fixing damp. These guys will always find a problem as they're trying to drum up business. What you need is in an independent damp surveyor.

Tell them to get bent.
If you're buying a house you know what potential maintenance you should budget for.
Same as when buying a car, you know it will need a cam-belt change at a certain point.

@PresentingPercy

A flat roof more than 15 years old probably is a liability. You might not have the problem OP, but someone will! It depends whether other people are queuing up to buy it. If not, try and negotiate. If you want to tough it out, they could walk away. So be realistic about the flat roof? How good is it really?

Aye but a flat roof doesn't cost £35k to replace, even with rubber.

The thing is, there is no certain answer to this.

Sometimes there IS a genuine issue and it is absolutely right that price is adjusted for it.
Sometimes it is not warranted and there is no reason to adjust price and people are trying it on.

The only way to find out is to have more investigation from neutral experts. It is the norm for the buyer to pay for these. If it gets to the quoting for the job stage, to judge how much reduction is needed, people should expect to get a couple of quotes and the seller might ask for that too at that point.

All those saying ‘don’t give in’ .....really we cannot know about this individual circumstance. There are properties where big, expensive jobs are revealed and there are those that simply show standard ongoing maintenance to be done.

And it nhs end it is always up to buyer and seller to reach their own compromise or walk away. No-one ever has to agree to pay the price they first offered, nor to accept a lower revised offer. A sale only happens if there is agreement and when there isn’t the sale falls through. Both happen all the time.

Very few people, when viewing a house, would have any idea a flat roof was near the end of its life. How could they unless they had specialist knowledge and had a close look at it. Quite often they will be coming to the end of life at 15 years plus and saying it’s ok now doesn’t mean the op has looked at it either!

Sun, rain, ponding, poor choice of roof material and construction all lead to defects. The buyers surveyor should be clear about the defects though so I would ask for precise details. If there are none, by all means hang tough. But you might lose the sale.

Would love to know what the outcome of this was OP… currently going through similar issues!

@NotDavidTennant

I’ve just had a damp specialist come over and measure the damp and he’s said that it’s non urgent but if he was to do the work it would be £1500.

I assume by a 'damp specialist' you mean a tradesmen who specialises in fixing damp. These guys will always find a problem as they're trying to drum up business. What you need is in an independent damp surveyor.

Absolutely this^. We were told by such a firm there was well over £10,000 of work needed on this house to damproof it, plus redecorating all the ground floor. We told the sellers when we discussed other matters (a rewire we could not have anticipated) but didn't ask for anything off the price for it. We got a proper damp surveyor in after we moved in, who did the job right, drilling into the walls and measuring any damp present, first thing he said when he came in was 'this is not a damp house' and the things he suggested to cure a few localised problems, quite normal in a house this age, were far cheaper and much less disruptive (and completely different, those the first company suggested would have made it far and away worse). He found only two very, very small areas of damp. One was cured by removing some ill-advised tanking (the first company wanted to tank the whole ruddy house). The other just needed the paper stripping off and breathable paint putting on. The rest was just ventilation and repointing with lime (removing the cement pointing some idiot had put on). It needed a repoint anyway. Anyone buying a house with a flat roof should ask when looking round how old it is and factor that into their initial offer.

There's no right or wrong answer here. It's all down to negotiation and who is in stronger position. We are just about to exchange. Our buyers asked for a further £5 off after survey (nothing major - asbestos in artex (as with any property that age etc). But we are desperate to sell immediately so we said yes - we'd already lost one buyer due to a chain collapsing and we had too much to lose to risk calling their bluff. It's your call!

@DogInATent

It's not unusual, and all offers are usually Subject To Survey (under English law).

We walked away from a house we'd had an offer accepted on after the survey came through. We'd have needed to have dropped our offer by £5-6k to cover the remedial work required (plus a contingency) and we decided we didn't want the hassle.

You either accept or reject their proposal. If you reject it, add a bit of an edge. Tell them they either confirm the originally agreed offer within 48hrs or the house is back on the market at the full sales price*. If you accept it, tell them it's conditional on a rapid Exchange (again, set a time scale - this time before the newly agreed discount will be refused).

*assuming you made the usual error of taking it off the market when the offer was agreed. There's no reason to do this. Leave the For Sale sign up and instruct the EA to keep marketing the property until Exchange. It's in your interest as Seller to do this. Of course, as a Buyer you'd want to discourage that sort of thing...

To be honest, I think that’s really poor play. If my vendor did that I would most likely walk away from the purchase as it shows a lot about their character. At the very least, I would continue to view other properties up to exchange seeing as it’s fair game!

Yeh also I would no way want people to be constantly viewing my property... we were so relieved to get an offer under our belt, mainly because we could stop trying to keep it unrealistically tidy with a toddler and a baby roaming around!

To be honest, I think that’s really poor play. If my vendor did that I would most likely walk away from the purchase as it shows a lot about their character. At the very least, I would continue to view other properties up to exchange seeing as it’s fair game!

Yep, every offer I’ve ever made has been contingent on the property coming off the market immediately. If I’m going to sink large sums into legal costs I want to minimise the chance of being gazumped.

If a seller refused to take the property off the market, I would lower my offer to reflect the increased risk of wasted costs.

So we are selling our house ... But our buyers are coming back with 10k less offer following homesurvey...
Their reasons was the PIV is broken so damp/condensation issues... We are in the process of changing it with a new warranty. But we also put some lap vent to fix the condensation in the loft so all being fixed...
They told us there is damp in the kitchen ceiling... It's not even damp it's coffee that explodes all over the walls and ceiling and we repainted...

They are picking on coal mining area... Which pass the test twice from when we bought and from they solicitors...
Also picking on radon area ... We are between 1 and 3% and the way to fix it is the PIV.
Also saying they might have to maintain a alleyway on the side of our house but there is nothing to maintain it's an alley way ...
Then picking on chancel repair because there is 0.000001% chance they might have to pay for church repair...
Also asking for warranty for a conservatory that was build around 2000.

We negotiating 2k down for boiler that is old but serviced and working and electric checks... But we are feeling super frustrated .. we received. Our contracts for both sale and purchased to sign and they are coming with those type of things 😐

Do you think 10k is a lot for what they came up with ?

Damp is just surveyor covering his back they've had a discount either they honour the offer or you remarket

@Jessjouan82 you need to start your own thread as this is an old one from 2021 and people are only going to answer the first post.

Sorry I thought I open a new conversation 🙃

have you done any maintenance or refurbishment on your flat roof in 15 years? you having had no leaks suggests not, which may mean the material is going to give way quite soon!

but you are quite right that the flat roof was obvious and evident at the time the offer was made and is therefore not a reasonable grounds to make a reduction now, and if there's no actual evidence of damp then there's no action necessary.

it's perfectly reasonable to say that the property was already priced appropriately for its current condition and they are perfectly at liberty to go elsewhere if they don't want it, but there will be no further reduction. chances are they are just trying it on and will go ahead.

bother sorry I just replied to the OP from months ago.

ZOMBIE THREAD

This damp business is often a toxic combination of arse-covering by surveyors and scamming by 'damp experts'. Is ther a specific identified problem with damp? I don't mean the 'dampmeter designed for wood thinks plaster is damp' rubbish. With this house, we were told by an expert survey prior to buying that the house needed 13 grand's worth of damproofing and tanking to 1m high all round. Total bullcrap. We didn't drop our offer a penny, as we knew it was nonsense. We cured it by ventilation and getting rid of wallpaper on the lime plaster walls.

As for the flat roof, all flat roofs will need replacing in the course of time, and everyone knows that. If a buyer failed to notice themselves that part of the roof was flat, I despair. We also had a rather old flat roof. Our initial offer took into account that it would need doing in the next 10 years or so, as would the rest of the roof need reslating. That was obvious, we didn't need a surveyor to tell us that, so didn't drop our offer when we got the survey.

We'd have lost this house if we'd insisted. The agent simply said 'we do not do that'.