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 🙏

Well if it’s a probate house, can you stab a guess as to what other money there is as a result of the owner passing away?. If over £1m, the next of kin might well have to pay inheritance tax on the value of the deceased’s assets before the house is sold. How will they fund this? Maybe call their bluff and say £725k or you are walking away

And the next offer may be more 🤷‍♀️

Well it’s not us you have to convince - a good estate agent would have their staff sorting these negotiations for you.

Where does it say they’ve priced the house to take the work into account?

Either way, a house is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it.The OP might be making a cheeky offer, but there’s nothing illegal about that. If it’s accepted, great. If not, they walk away. It’s entirely the vendor’s prerogative to accept or decline any offer.

In the current market with economic uncertainty + cost of materials, labour etc + time to get through planning, it's highly likely to be less.

What a seller believes a house is worth is neither here nor there in terms of actually making a sale, assuming that is what a seller actually wants to do. Any house will sell for the market value, which is (usually) what the highest proceedable buyer will pay. If no one bids what the sellers believe the house is worth, either it doesn't sell or they reduce the price.
In this instance, they may achieve a sale at the figure the OP has offered or more or they may not.

That's interesting. Completely the opposite amongst those that I look at in several areas. Often the sellers are not pricing them to sell, and that's a big understatement.

What does the survey say the house is worth ?

Ideally the seller should compromise after a survey of this magnitude, either in getting the work done or dropping the price.

@Montysmoon, that does't necessarily follow I'm afraid.
The executor of a will has a legal duty to maximise the value of the estate for the benefit of the beneficiaries. I imagine it will be tricky to get them to shift any more than the £15k they've already agreed to reduce the price by.

Take it from an electrician, 40 years ago is in the 80's, I've never had to re-wire a house wired after the regs changed in 1965 - so long as the cables are PVC insulated they will more than likely be fine, a new consumer unit and fittings may be advisable - but on privately owned homes (ie not rented) there is no requirement to meet current standards, and it is quite possible what is there would pass.

A local school I look after was wired in 1963, virtually all the original equipment still in use, including the fuse boxes, with some very minor tweaks it still passes the 5 yearly inspection.

If you want to be sure, commission an EICR, from my experience surveyors know diddly-sqwat about electrics, if they see an older fuse box they stick an advisory note on, means very little.

I trained as an electrician under the 16th edition of the wiring regs, we are now on ammendment 2 of the 18th - in practice very little has changed since 1965, the layout of circuits is the same, circuit breakers have replaced fuses, but fuses can still be installed new if you want them. The only major changes are the use of RCDs which became common in the 90's, but these can be retrofitted and metal consumer units to mitigate fire subsequent to grenfell - however the presence of an older model doesn't require its replacement in a private dwelling.

PVC wiring replaced rubber (which decays) in the 50's and earths became standard on lighting circuits from 1965, so anything wired since can be brought up to standard fairly easily - the main reason to fully re-wire would be for extensive modifications or refurbishments requiring lots of changes to the location of fittings.

The old colour code from pre 2004 is still acceptable if in situ.

True, but you might love your old boiler - my house was built in 1964 and has its original Vulcan gas boiler, I was going to change it, but my gas engineer said to keep it - you can still get the parts to keep it going (most of the very old models you can still get parts for!!), its very efficient and makes a satisfying roaring noise in the kitchen.

I think you're massively underestimating how far £10k will go.

"Where does it say they’ve priced the house to take the work into account?"

Montysmoon · Yesterday 22:19

RosesAndHellebores · Yesterday 22:12

What's the top value for the road when renovated ?

Ultimately, the vendors do not have to sell their house to you. There is nothing you can do if they say no.

Probably £900k max for a high spec 3 bed house.

Is the house worth the money you’re paying? (plus the cost to repair immediate issues (damp and electrics I think you’ve said). That 10k isn’t a lot to ask for a reduction. That covers just those two items.

a lot of people are really going in at you, the price of the house on the market doesn’t truly mean anything, we can market a property for anything, doesn’t mean it’s worth it. No offers in 6 months means red flags.

if you are prepared to walk away, then ‘push back’ go to them with your counter and explain the why, they i assume may have instructed solicitors etc so spent some money, what is the agent saying? What are the market comparables you can see sold prices for and live prices for in the last 6-12 months in the close area.

probate sales are complex sometimes, multiple sellers somethings get greedy and loose a sale over one person being greedy. Worth checking if they are paying council tax yet. Because that’s something they will have to cover if empty and past the relevant temp timeframe by their council.

its not wrong for them to say no of course. The true value of the property isn’t clear from your post, and two sides to all stories, but like any business deal you need to work out if the 10k and the fees you’ve spent are worth walking away or not, or if this is the sign that this isn’t the right house, and something better is ahead.

remember your survey is done for a reason and to confirm when extra things you may not expect.

hope it ends how you want it to x

I'm honestly struggling to see how;
You're buying a 735k home with a nearly 3k mortgage and presumably planning on ripping out the electrics, replacing the boiler, I'm imagining if it's a probate then every room will need decorating plus you may well be replacing kitchen/bathrooms and/or flooring but repairing the gutters is beyond you. As a big, old house owner, trust me, stuff goes wrong allllll the time, sure they've pulled up the gutters but once you get in, peel off wallpaper etc something else expensive will raise its head (crumbling plaster, leaky pipes, leaky roof, creaky floorboard). Our house is a bit older than that and looks beautifully modern inside but just this year we found a bath was installed badly by the last owners and has leaked through the kitchen ceiling, the extension roof tiles are falling off and we have a leak there (10k alone to replace), a new boiler (4k) and we tried replacing what we thought was a broken bathroom radiator only to find the heating pipes in there go literally nowhere anyone can see, so as its impossible to fix without burrowing into the walls to follow the pipes, the bathroom is freezing. Old houses cost £££ and once you dig a bit, all sorts come out. It sounds more like you've pulled an issue from the survey for a discount tbh, if you cant replace some leaky guttering, then you can't actually afford all this house brings.

Equally, you can do what you want/push back as much as you like. Just as they can tell you to jog on, you could ring tomorrow and lower the price by 50k if you wish. There's no wrong/right answer here, it's entirely between you and them, what they want to accept and what you're prepared to pay. So I'd say go for it, if they keep saying no you could even call their bluff and say you're pulling out - but it's a gamble isn't it and are you actually prepared to do it. The same way it's a gamble for them that they might lose a buyer. Fingers crossed it goes your way and you find everything else in the house is flawless so you don't have to pay out for anything unexpected, do quite doubt that though tbh.

Well are you prepared to walk away?

The property has had offers. The rest of your issues have been addressed in this thread.

If they won't negotiate and you can't afford the repairs the only option is to pull out , I'm betting there will be other issues crop up aswell and you may end up with a money pit . Personally id pull out and wait for something better .

You say they'd be silly, but that's their prerogative. And your opinion of them won't change the likely hood of them agreeing.

They have already negotiated. They've dropped it by 15. She's now wanting another 10k off for some gutters

You say it’s a probate property so probably they don’t feel they need to sell quickly. Or maybe one or more people whom will inherit say no, they won’t reduce the price. Or maybe they need that full sum to pay nursing homemfees.

In the nicest possible way , if you can’t afford £10k repairs on a £735k house as you are maxed out - I’d walk away - sounds like you’re over stretching which isn’t sensible (for any house imo) but Espec not a 100 year old …. What else cpuld lurking that you don’t know about yet

sold an old house and the buyers did this to us. It was infuriating. Their survey was a load of bollocks too (told us we didn’t have permission for things without checking, told us things needed to be done that we had already done and had proof). The buyers clearly expected a new build when what we were selling was a house we’d done a ton of work to that was still 150 years old and needed a bottomless pit of money to make perfect. I walk past the house often now and all the “urgent repairs” that they negotiated for have still not been done nearly 6 years on. Because the house was solid and they were chancing their arm. Unfortunately we did need to sell and were in a difficult chain so we all agreed to split the difference which was very good of all the parties. But when they called me up a year later and told me the bath was leaking they got a very rude response!!