Help. Is it a money pit?

[Fritilleries]

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/123592355?utm_campaign=property-details&utm_content=buying&utm_medium=sharing&utm_source=whatsapp#/&channel=RES_BUY

Needs rewiring, wall ties need checking, needs external rendering, roof needs checking, feels every inch of a century old. Not sure if scared of work.

Would offer 320 on back off work to be done as sale fell when buyer ran away from a survey, presumably with same jitters we have. Thoughts?

It's not the most exciting house for the money IMHO, but each to their own. I don't get why it'd be a money pit on the grounds it 'feels every inch of a century old' - that is fairly young for a house. Check this out if you want to get a sense; I think it's fascinating www.historicdoors.co.uk/blog/englands-building-age-infographic/.

All my sockets are above the skirting board and its a 1950s house. Unless you meant older than 70 years? More curious as to when it changed from on to above.

Terrible windows have been out in- should be illegal

Zoopla seems to have the pictures from the 2016 sale on it ? If so it was already hacked about then

You won't have to do everything at once though. It's a beautiful house but yes an ongoing project. Imagine out in that garden though 🙂

Never expect it to be near me and it is this time doesn't look like a money pit to me either but you can't get everything from the pics.

DP is an electrician and tells me our 1972 house doesn't need a rewire but I've strongly suggested () him getting it done before we do the rest of the work on the house (he won't).

Like others have said you may be able to just change the board?

Electrics: as above.
Render: not expensive to repair and repaint (in the big scheme of house buying at least!)
Roof: get additional survey. A few slipped slates will cost say £100 each (depends where you are) but a new roof and/or replacement timbers are spendy. Unusual not to need some minor roof maintenance fairly regularly.
Wall ties - no idea.

Wall ties people should know about. They used to be made of a material that degrades. As they rust they expand which lifts the bricks the are placed under. You can usually see horizontal cracks which indicate failed wall ties - however people will plaster/render over those in an effort to disguise issues.

Wall tie failure can lead to movement and subsidence. They are really important little things! However checking them is quick and easy and replacing them is fairly quick and nowhere near as expensive as you would think.

Contact a company for a survey (about £200) it will include a quote (in our area around 4k and 1.5 days work - all outside)

Roofers will usually do you a quick look over and estimate for free. Just give them a ring to get an idea what you're looking at.

Fuse board, as others have said, won't be up to current standards - but that doesn't mean dangerous!

I honestly think it's time we did away with these surveys and got actual experts in instead. They cause so much anxiety it's bonkers.

We had an old fuse box, cost £400 to replace, house didn't need rewiring.

If you’re a cautious/anxious person then old houses might not be for you. Having an old fuse box does not mean the house needs rewiring. If it works it doesn’t even need replacing. Surveys are full of meaningless rubbish like this, oh the roof is a 100 years old, oh the boiler is 15 years old. Panic! Panic!

the house has obviously being modernised, it’s nicely decorated, it’s been done up. You could move in and unless there’s something else in the survey you haven’t mentioned not spend a Penny.

if I was the seller and you offered 320k I’d laugh in your face and probably not entertain any more offers from you. If there was more than one person interested and I got an inkling you were a nervous buyer I certainly wouldn’t accept an offer from you. Not even an asking price one!

How can you posssibly tell from the photos that the wiring looks fine?!

If you offered that much for this house to me, I'd not want to hear from you. It may have old wiring but doesn't 'need' rerendering etc. Is this the first house you're trying to buy?

Is the EA playing games? Trying to scare people off so he/ his mate can eventually put in a low offer?

When we had ours surveyed- we had loads that was pointed - mainly they had to advise us of things they couldn't check. We were told:
full rewire might need doing
It might not have wall ties
Roof may need replacing in the next 10 years
Windows may need replacing in 10 years
Windows lintels may need replacing
The list went on and I remember being so scared. We were then told by EA that it's a standard list on old houses because they can't confirm the material state - which annoyed me off because I thought that was why we paid for the most expensive survey.
We moved in and all was fine. We did eventually replace the roof but for other reasons. Windows were fine, lintels were fine. We found out we did have wall ties when we extended and knocked a wall down. We replaced the fuse board but only because of the extension. What we did do straight away was get a full 10 year check on the electrics by a qualified electrician- a few things came up but even with the full check (took him 4/5 hours) and all the repairs only came to £500.

We have a 1920’s house, survey brought up loads of points that ‘should’ or ‘could’ be remedied, don’t think we’ve done any of them in our ten years here!
but this was our fourth purchase, I remember running away from a few with my first.
There will always be something, good to get the essentials done, but try not to worry too much.

You may find that they feel they've listed the house with a price in accordance with the amount of work that they recognise needs doing. You're suggesting a big price drop from their asking price so I'd expect them to negotiate up.

Fuse boards aren’t that expensive though? Probably about 1k to include fitting

What a beautiful house!

You're going to offer them 15% off asking price on the basis of ... ? Nothing in particular.

I'd tell you to do one.

I mean.... it's still on the market. Begs the question: why? 2 others on the same Avenue have been listed and sold in recent weeks.

Probably not sold as financial markets have been in turmoil just recently? It's a good price for a 4 bedroomed house - in fact it's really cheap compared to where I live. Lovely house and as for old fuse board - we only changed ours to a new one last year! Old one was perfectly fine for the 30 years we've been here.

The two in same area sold in last 2 weeks. So amidst the turmoil. I'm just intrigued.

Do you know it needs rewiring? Fair enough if so, that is messy, and the current owners were daft to do so much decorating without rewiring first. But you can get an electrician to inspect and test it and do you a report for a modest fee. BTW, where the sockets are proves nothing in terms of if it needs rewiring.

Wall ties. What evidence is there that they're failing? Old houses (ours is 1920s and a similar type of build- brick and render) may well have a surveyor saying that wall ties may need checking. [Our surveyor said the same, given we had black ash mortar- but added that as the walls all seemed in perfect true and flat with not a crack in sight (even though the render clearly hadn't been painted for yonks) there was no evidence that there was a problem. I unearthed two during other work, and they were in perfect nick- and far and away chunkier than modern ones are.]

Render- a surveyor should go around tapping it, if it sounds hollow anywhere, it's detatched and needs patching. [Our surveyor found just one small detached bit a couple of feet square. I'll sort it when we put a new porch on, as that's where it is.]

Roof needs checking. So does every roof, in theory. What does it mean in this case? Roof from photo of front looks flat, ridge tiles straight, hip iron in place in the corner. I can't see any sags on that elevation from the angle of the photo. What was the particular concern(s), or were there actually any, beyond 'every roof needs looking at'?

Before you offer less on this one, you need to get the facts straight. If it turns out that there really isn't anything majorly wrong, they will tell you where to get off.

I'm yet another who thought you'd posted the wrong link, OP.

My house genuinely is a money-pit. Rewiring and re-plumbing were just the start of it. But it was uninhabitable when I bought it. So that's what I was expecting. What's more, I'd consider 100 years old to be relatively new, so unlikely to have really major problems. It looks like a nice house, btw.

There can be lots of reasons to rewire even if it is broadly speaking 'safe'. If the wiring is pre 1980s, you ought not to have metal light switches, for example. If it doesn't have a modern consumer unit, it's not as safe if appliances go wrong.

Also, some lenders won't lend on houses not up to the current code. We got stuck with that in the early 1990s, IIRC about six months after a code change. Our lender demended the house was rewired BEFORE they would lend on it, despite a detailed electrician's inspection/test report saying it was perfectly safe. The lender's approach was clearly insane, as the sellers weren't going to do it. And as DH pointed out, the lender's office, which we were sitting in at the time, wouldn't be up to code either. They eventually agreed to lend, but not the full sum until it was rewired, so we had to have it done as soon as we moved in- I think they gave us 2 months to get it done in. Then they released the extra money.