Survey and buyer woes

[shoesaregood]

We accepted an offer on our house in May.

All seemed to be going well, but the buyer is now stating that she has issues with the survey. But she won’t tell us what they are or share the relevant parts of the survey with us.

She’s drip fed ‘damp’ and we sent our damp proofing guarantees over to her conveyancer. It’s still very much within warranty - there’s no visible evidence of damp at all. And no smell. She also said ‘possible asbestos in porch’ our survey from 4 years ago (which we’ve shared with her) didn’t pick it up. The house is old and the porch is not a new addition, so it feels unlikely?!

I think there may be other things too, but she won’t disclose them.

I’m not really sure where to go from here. She’s been dithering for a week, not pulling out, but not confirming that she wants to proceed either. I’m not sure why she won’t just share the survey. I’m also not sure that I can take much more waiting and uncertainty.

Tempted to just put the house back on the market, but I don’t want to lose her and subsequently our dream home if I can avoid it!

Any advice on next steps? Should we get our own survey done? Offer to get an aspestos test?

Put the house back on the market. She's going to be a huge pain in the arse and eventually pull out anyway I'd guess.

What does your estate agent say? There is very little stock coming to market so you might have to just go back to market or at least threaten to, did it sell fast first time round. They are probably sucking teeth with plans to renegotiate on the price......

Our agent thinks go back on the market tomorrow, I think he’s sick of dealing with her. And he’s wondering if it will spur her into action. It sold really fast. I know I’m biased, but it’s a great house, we’ve done tonnes of work on it and we’d stay here if we didn’t need more space for us to both wfh.

I think she is having second thoughts and is stalling for time to rethink/maybe view other properties.

If you put it back on the market her response will give you an answer as to whether she wants to proceed or not!

Yep, go back on the market. Selling is hard enough, you need a motivated buyer.

She'll wear you down then demand things.

Give her one opportunity to show you the survey, if you feel generous but I would be remarketing

Yes, I’m already feeling pretty worn down tbh. I agree that she’s probably trying to buy time to see what else is around and she’s not experienced with old houses, so possibly thinking that a new build would be much more straightforward.

Why on earth can’t people just be nice and straightforward through this process?!

Get it back on the market asap

If it went under offer quickly first time then fingers crossed it'll go quickly again

Tell her you will be putting it back on the market if she doesn't either share proof of her concerns or move on. Deadline of this Friday.

She sounds like a pain in the ass and I would put it back on the market, especially if it sold quickly previously.

However, on the point about the asbestos, I don't think the fact your survey didn't pick it up means anything. Our surveyor caught a really glaringly obvious issue once, and the vendors' surveyor when they bought hadn't identified it. Of course, that's not to say the buyer's surveyor is right either, but I don't think it's as cut and dried as your survey didn't state it so it must not exist.

Thanks furstive, that’s very true. I suspect we’ll end up getting an aspestos survey to put our minds at rest - they don’t seem horrifically expensive. And worth it for peace of mind.

The space is tiny, probably less than a meter squared (we just use it to store muddy wellies really, it’s not really part of the main house iyswim) and so shouldn’t be horrendously expensive to fix if that’s what we need to do to sell to a different buyer and prevent it turning up on another survey.

Our agent spoke to the buyer earlier apparently and she said that ‘her head is all over the place’ and she’s been advised not to share the survey or extracts from the survey with us or the EA. Definitely back to the drawing board I think. Honestly.

Put it back on the market. We had a similar issue and our buyer was a total nightmare. I wish we had taken the advice to put it back on the market instead of entertaining the twat who bought it. He messed us about for 9 months.

I do feel for you, we had a similar buyer once. I wish we'd pulled the pin rather than letting her dick us around for weeks. She then emailed our agent to say she was withdrawing and went on holiday for 3 weeks. Pulling out yourselves will flush her out once way or the other, either it'll make her commit if she thinks she's going to lose it or she was never going to buy it anyway. But I totally get how nerve wracking it is.

Funnily enough, we commissioned our own survey on something after the buyer above messed us around and it was worth its weight in gold when selling down the track. So yours isn't a bad idea at all.

I've just had an asbestos survey done on a property, prior to a renovation. I thought my letting agents were at it but apparently it's a proper thing! Not expensive.

I can't see who would have said to keep it confidential. It's not official secrets.

This sounds the same as our buyer was - they pulled out, then came grovelling back which we foolishly accepted (at that time we didn't have any other offers we wanted to accept) only for them to pull out again 3 weeks later.
Lots of dithering, never really got to the bottom of why they pulled out. I suspect they didn't realise that putting an offer in on a house actually has an impact on other people.

I'd get back on the market "we'll keep your offer on the table, but we just want to avoid delays should you decide you no longer want to proceed. Please let us know any specific queries or concerns you have with the survey, quoting actual sections of possible" ... Something like that?

Well she'll have to back up her claims one way or another. It's up to her if she wants further investigation in to asbestos, damp etc. Once she has an idea of the cost then she can start negotiating. But you can't waste time on someone so ditzy.

Pull out now, as pps have said. We had a buyer like this; messed us around for months and eventually pulled out immediately before we were supposed to exchange. Our onward purchase then went kaput as well, setting us right back to the start.
Buyers like this will be a nightmare all the way through; so escape while you can.

Thank you Andthen - I’ll steal that wording. I’m struggling to come up with something that doesn’t betray how annoyed I am!

With the survey I’m really confused about why she won’t share - we even suggested she bought a hard copy round to discuss with us, which she could then take away with her, but she refused. We can’t help if she won’t tell us what it says, rather than making vague references!

House buying and selling really seems to bring out the worst in people doesn’t it?!

That’s so weird that she won’t share the survey queries, why have a survey if you don’t want to act on any of the information given? I’m not saying you should just use them to renegotiate on price, but surely they are for reassurance that you are buying something solid and so that you know areas that need attention.
Our survey was being carried out on our purchase today, I’m looking forward to getting the results and will certainly be letting the agent/buyer know what comes up.
I also find myself amazed at how ‘all over the place’ some people are through the house buying/selling process, I get that it is a difficult process that has many ups and downs, but some people seem so unprepared and inflexible, I suppose it shows how much emotion is tied up in the whole concept of ‘home’.

The buyer has paid a lot for the survey, they are under no obligation to provide the information in the survey to the vendor, we have recently pulled out of an investment purchase, due to a very adverse survey. Yes we lost c£1500, but prepared to take the loss rather than be stuck with a problem. Sometimes property deals just don’t work out.

I would guess she's not telling you what's in the survey because it's not actually that bad. She's looking for an excuse to either pull out or reduce the price, and wants to use the survey as leverage, but can't do that if she shows her hand.

Roselily, I understand that there’s no obligation to share, but we can’t help if she won’t explain.

A few years ago we actually pulled out of a property with subsidence (deal breaker for us and I think most people). We did it very quickly and we were very honest about our reasons. I forwarded the survey over to the vendor after we pulled out - yes we had paid for it, but it was no use to us (and in any case, I still had a copy) and I felt terrible about pulling out so it seemed like the decent thing to do 🤷🏻‍♀️ Maybe we’re very naive, but I couldn’t see any reason not to do this.

I do hope that’s it fellrunner, i keep walking around eyeing everything nervously and wondering if that’s the issue!

Our survey had it written in that we could not show it to anyone else. Most do, I think, but people ignore it, and EAs pressure buyers to 'share', which they should not do without permission from the surveyor if it has that condition written in.
My view is that if a seller wants to see an entire survey, they should commission one. When we had an issues about two specific matters, we fully explained the issues to the EA. TBH, they were bleedin' obvious anyway. The EA was not satisfied with that, which was rather like us being called a liars, which didn't help matters.
In the end, we did two things- commissioned separate reports on the two issues from specialists with costings and (with permission) shared those, and got permission from our surveyor to quote just the relevant sections of the survey.
Though in price negotiations it is reasonable for both seller and buyer to see costings for remedial work, sellers and EAs have no god-given automatic right to see a survey commissioned by a buyer, even less so when them seeing it is a breach of the terms of the surveyor's contract. But some EAs seem to think they have. They should know better.

Thank you Blue, I didn’t realise they shouldn’t be shared. Clearly I need to read ts&cs more carefully!

We’d be happy if she could just properly outline the issues or read them out over the phone, to be honest.

I suspect we’ll end up commissioning our own surveys to put my mind at rest. I don’t want a similar situation down the line - in hindsight I wish we’d just done that in the first place as now my imagination has gone into overdrive.

We’re re-listing tomorrow and have someone coming to see about the potential asbestos situation at the end of the week. Hopefully it’ll sell as quickly this time round as it did last time.

BH, shoesaregood, most people don't bother reading the T&Cs and most surveyors don't seem to bother. But they were there on ours, and we respected them. The surveyor was happy to allow us to quote the relevant parts when asked, so it really wasn't a problem. I suspect it is to stop someone sharing a survey with a seller, and then that seller 'sharing' it with other buyers who would otherwise have to have their own done, doing surveyors out of work, or sellers using it for their own purposes in other ways, like peeking at the valuation if one is included, which is a private matter between the surveyor and their client.
I'd ask the buyer to ask their surveyor for permission to quote the relevant parts only, that seems fair enough to me. And if they are relying on things like a specialist survey for their arguments, to arrange for a copy for you, or a summary. We didn't expect our sellers to have to pay for that sort of thing. But if they had wanted to see a full survey, then that would be different.

Thanks Blue, that makes perfect sense, I’ll certainly be less ‘gung ho’ about sharing a survey in its entirety in the future.

Our buyer has done another drip feed to EA this morning saying the survey flagged ‘Japanese Knotweed in the area’ not in our garden, just ‘in the area’ - not sure what she thinks we can do with that!

Still, we’ll focus on what we can do: getting the asbestos checked and getting the damp work double checked. Back on rightmove now, so onwards and upwards!