Am I a mug for not gazundering?

[Togazunderornot]

We made an offer a couple of months ago for a house in North London that, although is not our forever home would be our home for the next 5 to 10 years.
We like the property and offered asking, mortgage would be long but around what we pay in rent now so not an overstretch but will be paying it in our sixties.
Survey came back with 25k of repairs but to be honest it felt like surveyor was catastophising a bit so we did not renegotiate.
We are now getting closer to exchange and all of these news do make me fret and now thinking we might be overpaying. I come from a country where there is not such thing as gazundering gazumping and an offer is binding unless you can't get a mortgage.
However I do feel like this is part of the game in England and not doing it is simply plainly stupid. I think it is a bit distasteful, and believe in karma so am I a mug if I don't gazunder?
Note we are still a couple of months from exchange as sellers would need to serve notice to tenants, doing it days before is really out of order!

Thanks for the messages.
We are first time buyers so no buyers to worry about.
We have already made clear to our solicitor that we would not exchange before tenants are out, initial contract said they would vacate before completion but not comfortable with that.
Re survey, flagged as urgent but it's an old house and we know it's not going to be compliant with current building regulations, so felt uncomfortable going back to them renegotiating for something that no homeowners would be rushing to fix because building regulations have evolved.
Anyway lots of food for thought!

Whatever your aim is can you please try to just ignore my posts and stop jumping in to criticise in an unhelpful way.
I will also be ignoring yours from now on.

My son is a FTB, exchange in 4 days.
DS was told > 1 month ago that if he changes anything about his mortgage request (increase in term, increase in his deposit which increase I was offering to fund, etc) that he would lose that deal & rate & get thrown back on open brokerage market & have to pay a higher loan rate.

As it happens, DS revised his offer down to reflect an asbestos problem found in survey, days after he got survey, revised down by similar to disposal cost. I think you have kind of missed a boat though, by only trying to gazunder now, long later... unless you want to risk paying that higher rate when you do buy because this seller has an income from the property, they may not be in big hurry to sell after all, and then you get to start all over again.

Is that your situation?

However I do feel like this is part of the game in England and not doing it is simply plainly stupid. I think it is a bit distasteful, and believe in karma so am I a mug if I don't gazunder?
Renegotiating based on survey results is reasonable but only on things that were not already visible after your own inspection.
Renegotiating just because you feel like it IS distasteful. The vendor is under no obligation to accept your revised offer and may instead walk away because they now fear you will be flakey and unreliable.
Considering that house prices are falling but rents are increasing, you could tip them into reconsidering the whole idea of selling!

I think that's slightly different as the price the seller sells at should reflect the market value.

The reason in this case, as buyers, is the price doesn't reflect the amount of repairs required to the property, so should be priced to reflect the repairs, taking into consideration market value

Op, a renegotiation is normal if a surveyor picks something up. They do tent to err on the side of caution, but what use is a survey of you don't take any notice of their recommendations. Personally I'd look to renegotiate, even if you meet in the middle somewhere

@lljkk good to know.
Around me, people would renegotiated price did not have to get a new deal, as long as you stay in the same LTV band then the bank was happy to decrease the amount lent. It must depend on the bank policy I suppose

We bought an old listed property last year.

The survey showed quite a number of things that needed doing.

We expected it as it's old and realistically the house was a competitive price when we looked at other similar properties. I feel the work was reflected in the asking price. We offered a little less at the time as you do with any property.

I think to gazump or gazunder now would be crappy. It's an incredibly stressful time for the vendor. I've got strong principles and if I was the vendor this would make me sell to someone else instead (I've done similar before)!

If the surveyor said all these urgent repairs are to bring it in line with updated building regs I wouldn’t worry too much, if they’re about things like safety/the structure/core utilities like water or electric then I’d worry a lot more.

We completed on our house in January at £18k less than we originally offered, £13k for unexpected survey findings and £5k for a significant delay completing. The property was marketed as needing a ‘cosmetic renovation’ but, when we had a survey, it actually needed a lot more.

I’m very glad we did because when we moved in it turned out these jobs were indicative of 40+ years of neglect which meant we had loads of surprises. We’ve spent about £13k on unexpected structural work alone despite a specialist structural survey - turns out stuffing newspaper in big cracks and plastering over them is very bad!!

Our survey report showed that there were roof issues. We could either just patch it but would need to be replaced in a couple of years, or have it replaced now. Cost to replace was 20K. Seller reduced house price by 7K, and we proceeded.

for places that are currently tenanted, it is likely the seller has not invested much and only ever fixed issues on the cheap. So there might be more cost than you think. Our sellers had the intention of flipping the property and therefore never invested in the property. So they would paint over wallpaper, doing cheap inbuilt cupboards that were glued into the wall, find cheap roofers to fix the roof but causing more damage etc.

also survey showed the boiler as fine. But when we took possession, the sellers left a bucket and mop under it..: we thought that they had just forgotten to remove it until we realised the boiler was leaking!

So whats the plan then OP? You've had a weekend to think about it.

You missed your chance after the survey to re-negotiate. Also surveys are widely a waste of time. I purchased a 4 year old house and had a survey. Half of it was either unable to inspect, need to get a qualified person or some other rubbish. It wasn't worth the paper it was written on. If yours is an older house then i imagine it will be 10x worse.

Gazundering isn't part of the game, its distasteful and risks collapsing whole chains. Part of the problems fuelling Gazundering are forums like this one (there are other branded forums, not just this one don't worry) where faceless people for their own gains encourage it.

I'm currently on the market and if I had someone try and bully me to reduce my price near exchange after all surveys etc are concluded because of ‘market conditions’ or any other made up reason I’d collapse a chain. If need be I’d also remarket at a reduced price due to market conditions and tell the previous buyers to jog on out of spite. It may sound petty but I have no time for chancers egged on by faceless people on the internet.

Well put. The situation has changed significantly and is likley to continue to do so in the near future. Buyers need to be super careful not to overpay but equally cannot expect the coming reductions to happen overnight. Its going to take time for market participants to adjust. The safest thing to do, if you can, is to wait and keep saving and strengthen your position.

The only obligation on buyers and sellers is to comply with the law.

Not some random persons idea of ethics.

In England you are allowed to negotiate right up to the point of exchange of contracts.

Which is why it is called "sold subject to contract" and not "sold".

The fact that people mis interpret the law, don't understand it or want to impose their own idea of ethical conditions on a transaction before it occurs/contracts are signed is not relevant.

It's stupid for buyers and sellers to give away this ability until exchange happens. That's because in the time the offer is made to the time exchange takes place further information may come to light at any time as regards the viability or value of the transaction.

If one party (buyer or seller) tried to renegotiate close to signing then yes there is a risk that the other party will pull out. It goes with the territory and isn't something unexpected.

Power is now with buyers, not sellers.

You say its emotional, but Perhaps I’m just old school honourable and hate chancers and bullies. My house is on for a price and I am willing to negotiate on market conditions today if someone wants to put in an offer.

When I last sold during the boom, i had the option of a cash buyer who wanted to BTL or a first time buyer with a mortgage. I took the option of the FTB as my house was priced reasonably. The BTL landlord came back over asking. I declined because I’m not greedy and agreed to sell to someone who wanted to get onto the ladder over profits. They surveyed and we came to an agreement in price after the survey. Due to the top of the chain being wallies it took nearly 6 months to complete and my neighbours house went on at more than i had sold mine for as it was a real boom period. i didn’t suddenly turn round and ask for more money because of ‘market conditions’ going upwards. Yes some did and they are just as reprehensible as gazunerers and gazumpers.

Its a buyers market and I will offer what i think is a fair price to get the most out of a deal get that but I’m sick of CFers renegading risking chains and peoples dreams after all surveys etc have come back. We need to move to a system like Scotland to stop this immoral practice.

Your morals have already told you that you find it distasteful and it doesn't sound like you want to do it.

Don't feel you have to just to fit in with our culture.

When your fixed rate ends, can you still afford your lender's SVR if the market drops 20%? Do you have enough equity/deposit to cover it?

The most important thing is affordability, not fitting in.

@Twiglets1 please don't tell people not to watch the Moving home with Charlie videos. Yes, he does waffle on, and I find the waffle tedious, but I have learned far more watching half a dozen of his videos than I have on four months of being on this forum. It's a terrifyingly landscape for buyers and we need all the help we can get at the moment.

I’ll say what I want to say thanks.

He waffles on to get people watching his channel for longer in the hope he will eventually get to the point, which in turn generates money for him. He doesn’t say anything revolutionary you can’t read elsewhere without all the waffle. Or does he? Can you list his main points or don’t you want to as that doesn’t make money for anyone?

By his own admission he is a millionaire aiming to become a billionaire. A bit of a fantasist most likely.

He doesn’t say anything revolutionary you can’t read elsewhere without all the waffle.

Not denying he doesn't waffle; whether he makes money of it or not is none of my concern (also, really? that youtube channel only has something like 300 subscribers); the reason I watch is because it's really, really easy to digest. Yeah, I read the headline the BBC like everyone else does and when something pops up on a google page I often click on it, but more often than not, context is never explained. It's all very well talking about notional house prices versus real house prices, but it's of bugger all use to me if you're not going to explain what that means, which I now fully understand.

Don't get me wrong, I find the waffle quite irritating myself and do wish he'd get to the point far more quickly, but in amongst all the waffle and going off on tangents are nuggets of information about the housing market, inflation, government incentives, wages and various things (mostly giving me an historical view that I'm clueless about) tie together that I just didn't 'get' because, until four months ago, I had no vested interest (wasn't desperately serious about house buying/didn't have to worry about market slides and negative equity - I thought everything was horrifically expensive but the future mostly looked rosy) and therefore didn't care enough to try to educate myself.

If you're a FTB it's really useful to get a mass of context IN ONE PLACE so you can make sensible decisions for your future.

I don't have the time or the economic smarts to be reading dozens of articles per week to try to make sense of it all.

So, no. I'm sure there's nothing radical there; I'm sure there's nothing there that's not being said in another places, but that all the information is collated for me and I can watch and genuinely understand what's being said is what's most useful for me.

By his own admission he is a millionaire aiming to become a billionaire. A bit of a fantasist most likely.

That's his prerogative and I couldn't give a stuff about it. I've never paid him for a service, nor will I.

At the end of the day people can make their own mind up whether they agree with me or you if they give his videos a try.
If his message is so useful for FTBs, what is it? Hard to understand how you have time to sit through all his waffle to get the nuggets of information that are useful, but not the time to educate yourself on the housing market via other more succinct sources.
You are free to carry on recommending his videos and I am free to carry on giving my opinion that they are heavy in waffle & low in content. And his videos & website are there to make him rich which he wouldn’t deny.