Discovered Next door had subsidence + underpinned

[cheeseislifeyes]

Hello, I'm a FTB and we are half-way through the conveyancing process.
we like the house (victorian period property), Level 3 survey shows a few issues, but nothing major. the surveyor says they can't see obvious signs of subsidence but there is a footnote saying they aren't structural engineers, plumbers, roof specialists etc etc. what is the point of them really?!

anywaaaay... we found out through the Building control site that right next door to the house (literally 4 metres away) the neighbour had subsidence in the early 1990s and this was underpinned. i knocked on the neighbours doors - he's an old man but he said there's been no problems since the underpinning (i don't entirely trust him as i'm sure he wants to sell his house soon).

our vendor has declared no subsidence history with the house.

we are a bit concerned about next door's subsidence though, simply because it has occurred so close to the property we want to buy.

we are thinking of reducing the offered price to reflect this (about £10k - plus some for the few issues raised in the surveyors report).

i would like to hear what recent buyers think? wwyd?

To be fair @cheeseislifeyes you asked a question, and lots of people took the time to reply.
You didn't like the answers, so go ahead and ask for a reduction, none of us can 100% predict what a seller might do.
I expect a lot of the posters on this thread are millennials, this is 'Mumsnet' and so if you feel you are from 'the information generation' and we aren't, then why the hell would you ask us?

I’ve bought and sold many houses. Most issues I’m fine with but I avoided a whole housing estate because some of the properties have signs of subsidence.
It’s your first house, you are highly unlikely to stay in it for life, you need to be able to sell it easily to buy the next house and preferably with a bit of a profit. If you are worried about this so will the people buying it when you sell. Either walk away or knock more money off. I had to negotiate £75k of my current house after the buying process had started due to issues that would affect resale. The reduction was agreed as it was recognised the risk needed to be covered

@cheeseislifeyes
It does rather beg the question why you didn't just do the research on the Internet yourself in the first place ? Or indeed just ask a structural engineer V bizarre !

*hello. update" i've spoken to a few structural engineers who have said the subsidence next door is a factor they definitely consider when assessing the structural integrity of the property. so those saying "next door's subsidence is none of your business"... lol.

There are clearly lots of MN sellers on this thread who are perhaps a little frightened of a thing called the internet where buyers have access to information about neighbours and neighbouring properties that could affect the structural integrity of the home they might purchase. whether you like it or not, neighbouring properties do matter, just as much as the neighbours themselves.

good luck in this market full of millenials and genz from the information age .*

Woah!! You got your back up. 😂😂

You're the one seems a bit frightened of 25 year old underpinning next door tbh. Houses have a lot of history especially older ones. In some places lots of houses are underpinned and it makes not a dot of difference.

Pay for a structural engineer . Because 25 years ago a house next door was underpinned. It's your money crack on.

Good Luck to you.

^ this

A thing called the internet 😂

Is anyone else getting IT crowd vibes?

The internet started in 1983 and the first millennials were born in 1981. The last millennials were born in 1996 and computers were pretty mainstream in work places by then (you can use “the internet” to Google these things) and so older generations were using the internet before some millennials were even born. All you’re doing is making yourself look like an entitled dick (and ageist to boot) and that really isn’t going to help in negotiations on sale price. And that’s coming from a millennial.

What are these “other things” in the report that make up the £10K reduction you want? You’re buying a Victorian house, it’s old, it‘ll need a lot of stuff doing to it. Don’t want to take the risk, but a new build. It seems like you aren’t happy with the price and maybe didn’t get the reduction you wanted when offering, so looking to knock the price down now. If you’ve already offered less and met in the middle somewhere, then the vendor will just see this as you pushing your luck and being cheeky. They may well pull out because you don’t seem trustworthy that you won’t try again before exchange of contracts. There’s a lot of things that the internet doesn’t teach you and one is the house buying process can be long and if you can’t trust your vendors/buyers then many people just won’t enter into the process. Get a structural survey done and go from the recommendations in that report. It’s a bit of a joke for you to say you don’t want to spend any money but you expect the vendor to drop the price by £10K just because you say so.

Good Luck FTB in a market full of people with actual house buying experience.

Feel free to come back and gloat once the home owners have actually agreed to lower their asking price off the back of two structural surveyors stating the blinking obvious, but not actually inspecting the property itself.

Dear god!

Who do you think invented internet?
Wrote all the code?
Designed the websites?
Who bloody taught you at school?
Fixed the millennial bug?

Do you even know what that bug was??

You absolute tool.

I had sympathy with you until I read that!

off the back of two structural surveyors stating the blinking obvious,

I know. 😁🤦‍♀️

Personally, I wouldn't be too bothered. But this is more based on the subsidence being so long ago.

i haven;t been on here for awhile. it's funny to read the comments from the nervous sellers in a buyer's market.

thanks to those who have some decency and were able to politely provide advice. to you, and only you, have a great weekend!

You're the one being rude (and ridiculous). Most people on here aren't selling, we are offering our knowledge.

The reality is that you aren't going to get a reduction for ancient dealt-with subsidence next door, and the one nervous one on this thread is you.

I guess your generation just aren't robust enough.

Okay, we get it. You only want replies that tell you what you want to hear or what you agree with. Rest assured, you're not alone, there are others like you on here🙄. I thought the point of this place was to gather a range of opinions and learn from the experiences of others. That means, amazingly enough, getting some posts you wont agree with. You don't need to make sarky wholesale assumptions about the posters who have taken the trouble to reply to you, such as they must be selling a house with subsidence because they suggest that subsidence doesn't always affect houses next door ( it doesn't, as a matter of fact).

Your options are very basic, really.
Either:

Pay for a structural engineer/geotechnical engineer and find out whatever actual facts can be found out, and decide what to do on that basis.

Or

Guess what's going on.

Your call.

Didn’t get your reduction then eh?

Victorian houses on London clay do move and I'm in an area where the majority of my road are either underpinned or propped up by a neighbouring property that is underpinned. The work on the neighbour's property will make yours more secure. The houses sell for 700K or thereabouts and no reductions would be accepted unless there were untreated problems

No they won't. Most people would have no issues if they knew it was 25 years ago and all fine since.

Reducing £10k is ridiculous, I hope they dont accept it. They are under no obligation to go around telling people about neighbours historic subsidence. And I doubt you'll mention it when you sell in the future either.

I think you're using any excuse to try to get money off.

Get over yourself 🙄

Hmmmm, I think there's really one nervous poster on here.

How did you get on with a price reduction?