Sellers won’t budge after survey price negotiation

[Montysmoon]

Hi everyone,

We had our offer of £735k accepted on a £750k house a month ago. The house was on the market a while - about six months and had no proceedable offers in that time (other buyer were needing to sell). It’s a probate.

While the house is old (100 years ish), no major alarm bells rang during our viewings.

But our homebuyer survey flagged urgent issues like gutters in disrepair that are causing damp throughout the property. The electrics are 40+ years old so the house will need rewiring, and the boiler is also old. There are other minor issues too like decaying woodwork etc.

We have asked the vendors to consider taking £10k off the sale price as this is what has been quoted to us for the repair work to the gutters and damp. This does not include anything for electrics or anything else.

Vendors are refusing to renegotiate price. I want to push back because we simply won’t have the money to do this repair work otherwise, plus they’re not exactly inundated with other offers so they’d be silly to risk losing us.

I’m also selling so I appreciate that it’s not always straightforward just lowering the price, but given the obvious defects in the house I think it’s a reasonable sum. Does anyone agree/disagree? Advice very welcome 🙏

I guess it depends where you are, I only monitor the market in my local area and my home town, and it's definitely not the case in those places - houses sell very quickly regardless of condition and properties requiring renovation aren't much cheaper than their done up equivalent. I have to say that I don't mind that much because it stops flippers doing a bad job to make a quick buck.

Not true around here either. It just takes awhile longer with an older house that needs work. Two examples locally were sold for (a) £500k and (b) £700k, both needing work but liveable. The £500k one probably had £250-300k spent on it and has just sold 5 years later for £1.1million. The other is now up for sale at £1.5 million after £300k of work and 10 years. There is good money to be made on them, and buying a project is also the only way a lot of people could afford to buy in this location. But not everyone sees this. Three estate agents that valued our home that needs £80k of work said to finish the work if possible because even though it’s priced £150k less than it would be finished, a lot of people will spook down the line and try to haggle. And they were right.

I don't think its cheeky at all but "we can't afford what you are asking" is not a reason for a seller to reduce the price.

The seller has had zero offers in six months, they are not in a strong position. It sounds like more than 10k needs to come off, or maybe look elsewhere because this house could quickly become a money pit.

I would guess that "flippers" only operate in a tiny minority of areas in the UK now, really can"t see that being profitable any more, especially with the rise in cost of materials?

Even if you had no proceedable offers in six months? How many months/years would you wait before dropping the price?

Thing is in house selling people have all sorts of ideas. I know of so many instances where people have held out of for the price they want- years sometimes. You can’t make them take less because you think it’s logical.

we kept a house up for sale for 5 years on and off once to get the price we needed.

This happened when we sold Mils house. Young first time buyers loved it but said their highest budget was 15k under our asking price.

Because there was no chain we reluctantly agreed, they had their survey and wanted another 20k off which was ridiculous. It was already priced lower than other properties of the same age, it was rewired, new boiler etc but just old fashioned as it had an elderly lady living there.

The few items of leaks and gutter were all that was needed and our solicitor advised making a list of the more serious issues and saying we would have them dealt with if they agreed to their original price.

After months of them faffing when we had everything fixed they had a 'friend' who worked in the building trade inspect it and still wanted another 20 off.

We told them to GTF in a nice way. It was obvious thsy were never serious about the original reduced price and thought we were desperate.

Fair points, people who had a compelling reason to move, job/divorce etc. couldn"t wait five years though?

The house is worth what buyers are willing to pay for it.

My point is this: they’re playing hardball on price because they want that 10k and they hope to secure the buyer at the original offer - that’s fair enough. But if the buyer also plays hardball they either lose the offer or reconsider.

If they do stick to their guns OP has the option of finally agreeing the original price.

£735k on a house for sale for £750k is only 2% below asking price. That's a very small reduction. Houses are currently selling well below asking price and where I live a majority of properties for sale have the asking price reduced several times in succession. Is there any evidence that the selling price reflects the work that needs to be done, or is this just conjecture? I couldn't spot it on the thread but I may have missed it.

Damp certainly isn’t always obvious. Nor dodgy roofs.

I replaced 2 large flat roofs and fixed structural damage to several rafters of the main pitched roof that was flagged in my survey, they offered a £2.5k reduction which was about half the cost of the job and we paid the other half.

£10k for 'guttering' is quite a lot, how bad can the damp be if you didn't notice it? Also a home buyer survey? as in the cosmetic level one not a structural survey?

We rewired the kitchen in ours but purely because we took it back to brick and reconfigured the whole layout. It didn't 'need' doing but we future proofed while already stripped back by upping the amount of appliances the kitchen could handle and adding more sockets etc...

A house does not 'need' a rewire just because its 'old', needing a full rewire is really rare most houses can just have little updates as you go and simply need a new fusebox/interface which was about £600 for us.

You had a chance to see the boiler at viewing surely, anything obvious at viewing doesn't really count after survey as it should have been counted in the offer. The roof issue we had counted as we couldn't view inside the roof (EA here don't let you unless theirs proper access to the loft, liability in case you fall off ladders etc...).

You need to look at property sale price history, specifically if it has changed hands during the ultra low interest rate period, the "clearing price" for a lot of property is going to be way below that level now.

Why does everybody on RM insist sellers have had 'no offers'?

There is ZERO possible way for you to know that, the only people who could know is the seller. Even an EA can't know as you can get off market offers too (although they will usually be rejected due to EA contracts). They may not have ACCEPTED any other offers but they could have had loads.

People turn down offers all the time, for all sorts of reasons too not only from price and proceed ability but also from not liking the person offerings attitude or having moral stances on landlord/flippers or having a set type of buyer in mind (like a young family who will keep it a family home etc...).

Most people selling also do not NEED to sell, they list thinking they will IF they can get enough to move on to what they want and they will stay put if not. They lose nothing by not selling. Many list with a house they want in mind but lose that house and have to remain contracted to the EA for months despite no longer even wanting to move.

Its called 'testing the market' or 'unmotivated selling' and its about half the market. Its not 'chasing the market down' because they don't HAVE to move at all if they don't get exactly what they want they can just stay put indefinitely at not hassle to themselves. They have the commodity and are using it, they are in no position to HAVE to lower prices just because someone 'thinks' they should because they listed x amount of months ago.

Prices are made at the margins though, by the people who actually need to sell and do actually sell, a price drop in a street of similar houses devalues the whole street whether people hang on to their belief about how much their house is worth or not. As you say most people don"t HAVE to move (and no one viewing a house is homeless!) so this is the reason that demand has dropped so much - See the collapse in New-Build sales and the difficulty now in selling bungalows (people are finding it harder to sell at the price they want for an existing bigger house so they can downsize to a bungalow) The "Not Enough Houses!" mantra was always just hot air and a banker/EA scam as many people are now finding out to their cost.

I'd imagine they think they've already given you £15k off the asking price they wanted, so that should cover the work.

Empty houses are often incorrectly flagged for sank in winter. Might it not be that the gutters simply need cleaning out? If so, 10k is a big reduction.

Sorry, meant to say incorrectly flagged for damp!

Yes, surveyors always say old houses have damp in winter IME.

This

If it was an otherwise modern property then it would make sense.

Asking for £10k off on a 100 year old property when there would clearly be modernisation work to be done and you are already £15k under asking is pretty cheeky.

Especially with this comment:

"I’m banking on the fact that they were on the market for 6 months and so should be desperate to sell. But clearly they’re taking the risk"

Super cheeky.

Offer the price you think it's worth and not because you're assuming the seller is 'desperate'. They clearly aren't and the seller doesn't have to sell.

If the house is 100 years old and it's a probate sale, I'd say you're lucky if that's all that needs doing. I'm sure the price that they listed it at, reflected the work needed to be done.

" I want to push back because we simply won’t have the money to do this repair work otherwise,"

That sounds ominous, as another poster said, what happens if serious repairs are needed, roof maybe, after you move in? You sound a bit too financially stretched here I think. 700k+ for a 100 year old house sounds like a lot to me, are you sure they are not just complete chancers?

We don"t know if they have to sell or not, we do know that they have not been able to sell at the price they want so far, that usually indicates an asking price out of touch with market reality for the type of property.