Advice on houses - to pull out or not

[iLikeToRockNotRoll]

Advice please from those with more experience in buying houses than us. We have been accepted on a detached 4 bed - this was in November last year. It’s got great potential but we will need to do an extension and put in new kitchen etc. We are at the survey stage, there are a few flags but nothing huge and out of the ordinary for a house it’s ages.

We have just seen that a semi-detached 4 bed house round the corner has gone on the market for exactly the same price as the house we are buying. It’s beautiful, all done up and has had the extension with a new kitchen and a new bedroom (the 4th one) and benefits from a bigger garden. We haven’t viewed yet but plan to.

Should we jump from the house we are buying for the other one or use it as an opportunity to renegotiate the price (prices have fallen loads in recent months)? It will cost a couple of £100k to extend the house we are buying and get the new fittings, and it all looks like the only real big pro of the one we are buying now seems to be that it is detached rather than semi. The mortgage valuation also came in tens of thousands under the asking price too (but we were told by our mortgage broker that the valuation was done by algorithms so it’s not actually being undervalued).

What would you do? We don’t want to cause heartache and distress to the vendors of the house we are buying but we are also worried about paying significantly over market odds…

About 18%
It was listed at just after the peak, think they got a bit carried away in the flurry of people paying over the odds.... now nothing is shifting around here and a lot that sells on rightmove often appears again after falling through. All worked out well in the end for us in hindsight.

All worked out well in the end for us in hindsight
Glad to hear it!
round my way houses seem to go 'SSTC' very quickly, and then nothing else happens, 8 months later still sstc

How was the viewing, OP?

We ended up convinced we are making the right choice with the detached, thanks for asking! We liked the semi but, perhaps it’s to do with our mindset going in, we kept thinking of how we might have done something differently or chosen different finishes for things since we effectively have a blank slate with the detached. So we are cracking on with our purchase and will see what issues arise from the electrician’s safety assessment later on this week as to whether we will try to negotiate the price. A lower mortgage valuation result alone would not be justification enough I think. We did also a L3 homebuyers survey which threw up a few things but aside from the unknowns about electrics and roof, most of it can be classed as sold as seen

Surely a lower mortgage valuation is exactly what you can use to negotiate?

That’s good, I don’t think you will regret buying the detached property, where you can add value. That is what we have always done over the years. It’s always tempting to go with the ready done, but rarely are these to your taste, so there is still an element of compromise. Good luck with your move.

Exactly. A very reasonable reason to renegotiate particularly in a falling market when. You probably don't want to overpay in a falling market.

Good move I think I'd always prefer a detached - if I could afford it! Round here you'll pay around 35% more for detached v semi. They're always more desirable.

Our worry about negotiating just based on the lower valuation was that it can be easily explained away by the fact that the building society used an algorithm to assume the value and that the price we have paid can be said to be within a reasonable range for it (even though it’s £30k off). But we have since paid for and received a failed electrics safety certificate for the detached house, so I think there are sufficient grounds to negotiate now.