Water water everywhere … it seems !

[Rockschooldropout]

Ok slight exaggeration ..however our structural survey (full level 3 survey ) has just come back on a 1930s bungalow we are buying .
first context we are cash buyers as using my inheritance and it’s no chain due to the owner being elderly and passing away , its being sold by his brother . House hasn’t been touched for years bar windows , doors and boiler and we knew we were looking at new kitchen , bathroom wiring .
When we went to view for the second time , the vendor had replaced the bathroom flooring and living room bedroom and hall carpets , the estate agent said there had been a leak but no further info .

so survey comes back , external walls are damp , lots of mould and damp caused by condensation station ,floor joists are possibly rotten guttering needs replacing , there is an issue with the under felt in the roof ….. and .. the water pipe from house to stop cock has a large leak .. surveyor suspects it’s the cause of a big house leak as the water is turned off . House has been empty for a year. He’s advised a specialist damp survey which we’ll get but DH thinks the house is going to be a box of problems and wants to walk away .. the sake is going through quickly too as no chain/cash buyers and we had to wait a month for the survey .
Would you get the damp survey then renegotiate?I suspect they’ll refuse a lower price as they’d refused a lower offer before ours . It had previously sold before us but the buyers couldn’t get a mortgage .

If you get a damp house everything will be rotten, joists, ceiling joists, walls, I bought one once by mistake years ago. The quote for basic repairs for repair of all rot caused by damp was £100,000. I stuck it straight back on the auction and sold it to a builder but still lost 10kK that was my life lesson. Don't do it, there must be other houses.

Nothing in our budget in that area (desirable area ) but tbh I’m already feeling stressed . It’s got a matchbox size kitchen and need an extension as it is .. I feel im being pressurised by DM because its round the corner from her, she’s minimising the surveyors findings but I’ve bought lots of houses over the years and I’ve been been told to get a damp and timber survey !

that must have been a horrible shock to find that out 😰 I bet you relieved to sell the house

The thing is you will be the one dealing with all the stress of having to put this house right (you and your husband) so it has to be your decision.

I agree with him that it's too much ... something less stressful will come along, even is it's a bit further from your mum.

@Twiglets1 Yep that’s how I feel , he agrees we should wait until next year and buy a house we can move into and live in , whilst doing up at our leisure , we may just need to take out a small mortgage to get the right house .. This house needs a full rewire , new windows , bathroom and kitchen and the utilities area needs striping back and dry lining .. that’s before we start dealing with damp issues on the walls. Step dad is a construction expert and said he feels it’s just a case of taking the affected walls back to plaster and surface insulation on the exterior as other houses in that row have done .. but it’s still lots of work and extra money and I know the vendor isn’t going to budge . There are lots of things that don’t faze me but damp isn’t one of them

We have made the decision to withdraw from the house purchase , we are already out of pocket with the survey and conveyancing but I think we are going to end up spending a lot of money on this house just to make it nice to live in .. the thing that stood out for me was he refers to the damp as the “main issue “

The other issue with 1930s houses that have never been re-plumbed is that they will have a water supply pipe made of lead or even asbestos, and that you would be need to lay a new pipe in from the street and into the house.

Yes indeed. It was a lovely big house in a wonderful area and they had gone to enormous lengths to hide the damp. They had put three layers of hard kitchen flooring in so we didn't fall through the floor on the walk through.

Yes that's what I had in the damp house.

Yep he’s raised that on the survey and I’ve researched the eye watering price to replace it!
Saying that , I live in a house built in 1962 and It’s never been replumbed apart from under the sink still original piping inside the rest of the house so no doubt lead pipe into the house . We live in a very hard water area so it’s probably layered with limescale !

Jesus 🙈🙈 .. in our case they’d written on the key fob . Don’t walk on bathroom floor !

Just the words damp, condensation and mould send me into fight or flight mode. I have this in my rental flat and trying to overcome the issues is like playing whack a mole. You think you understand where it’s coming from, take remedial action, you think you finally have it nailed. But November rolls along and sure enough, the mould reappears. Sorry haven’t RTWT but the damp in the loft probably due to insulation with non breathable sprayed on foam ( there were free grants for this about 10 years ago and the companies were pushing it like mad) and will make it unmortgageable . It sounds like a house of horrors frankly. I would give it a wide berth, despite the location.

For me the fact that the vendors won't renegotiate would bother me more than the condition on it's own. While I'd agree with your stepdad that it almost certainly is all fixable - it also all costs money, time and effort which has to be reflected in the sale price.

That sounds like a nightmare 😞..

its definitely not spray foam in the loft , the surveyor checked , however the roof was replaced around ten years ago and he thinks its not adequately ventilated .. (more expense 🫠)

We don’t know for sure they won’t but it’s been made quite clear that they weren’t accepting a penny below the asking price after dropping the price a couple of times . I definitely don’t think they are going to renegotiate to the tune of several thousand

Oh and external wall damp may have several plausible and fixable explanations .. but I did raise an eyebrow when he said there was damp on some internal walls .. could be caused by the leak .. or worse ! Notwithstanding that I doubt I’ll persuade them to sort the leak .. it all feels like stress

We had the lead pipe into our 1930s house replaced when we had a new boiler 9 years ago. The old boiler was installed in 1966 so all pipe work had to be replaced as it wasn't compliant, and the lead pipe from the road was included in the work.
The water company replaced the pipe from the main to the stopcock in the road for free.

Ooh it’s interesting it wasn’t done in this house as the boiler was replaced about 10 years ago .

we asked our water company to replace the old lead pipe into our house and they said yes , it will be £3000 !!! Their argument was the pipe from the stopcock into the house is the homeowners responsibility

I would walk away from it unless you want to do a full on renovation.

Sounds like many tens of thousands and too much for someone dealing with serious illness to take on. It's unfair of your mum to apply pressure to you.

The bank balance dictates that I don’t !

Yes it’s feeling very overwhelming .. especially as we’d have to travel up at the weekend and it’s 4 hours away . The initial plan was to take holiday and do as much as we could in that time. I think that’s gone out of the window

We had a strict 28 k to do up without anything structural. So that just went through the roof