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 🙏

They probably only came down £15k because they knew of these issues

You can see whether a boiler is old or new at viewing the property. You don’t need a survey for that. It’s one of the key things to check at a viewing.

modernisation of a house is also immediately visible at the viewing

Yes. We looked at one years ago. Wouldn't offer the asking price. It sold more than a year later for what we had offered.

Estate agent called it 'guilty relative syndrome'. Not recognising the dump granny lived in and expecting top price for a project house.

If you really can't afford the £10k then you have no choice do you, you have to back out.

Tbh though, the sellers must be mad to risk it for 10k

Nice story

I struggle to believe how you can't afford 10K when buying such an expensive house.
If it's true than you are really stretched financially and maybe it's a sign not to proceed.

£10k rea.lg is nothing when you are quoting numbers like that. We exchanged on a 85 year old property today, we did have a survey done but it didn't tell, us anything we couldn't see with our own eyes and nose.. We are first time buyers with no chain buying a probate property so no chain. Our mortgage was approved in 1 day and we move in on Friday. We offered on 5th October I think it was. We chipped them £25k from £400k with the stipulation we were done i. 8 weeks. We are everyone's happy. I think your sellers are not motivated to sell

If the survey hadn't revealed anything new then I'd agree with you, but it did. OP said the damp and the state of the guttering were not obvious.

I shouldn't think 1980's wiring needs a total upgrade. A new fuse box maybe, but millions of houses have the same or older wiring.

Gutters are a problem if they are causing damp, but maybe they just need clearing?? Again, gutters should last 50 odd years.

That would seem to be very good advice @Montysmoon

Pay good heed to it. You could soon find yourself living in a house which you can't really afford to do up, or whose mortgage is seriously compromising your monthly budget.

I don't think it's worth it.

It seems a bit risky stretching yourself so far financially. Maybe try negotiating to £5k reduction.

Hmmm, not sure about that. If the guttering was causing damp then it would have been obvious from the viewing

I agree. My dad’s property needed a fair bit of work, but is perfectly liveable while you do it. We put it up for sale at £500k as the agent suggested. They also said it would be nearer £650 if finished off. It would probably cost £60k - £80k to do the work. It got a full offer immediately. Then a few months later they had a survey and panicked. We’ve taken it off the market, and are going to do the work ourselves before we decide whether to put it on sale again, or keep
it and holiday let it. It will be worth a lot more once done, so we won’t lose. The buyers could have had that equity themselves. But I think they were over stretching and not really used to old houses.
One of the downspouts on the gutters had come off, and there was damp in the wall at that corner. After fixing the pipe it’s dried up really well over the summer.
Another consideration for those saying that probate sellers won’t want to pay council tax or bills over winter - we worked out we would spend £3.5k a year on bills, so even if it took two years to sell without a £10k price drop we’d still be ok.

This is a probate property so time on the market etc doesn’t give you as much negotiating power as it usually would.

Your only option really is to go back to them and say that unfortunately you cannot proceed without the reduction, and ask if they would reconsider their position.

Whatever the estimated cost is of fixing everything - it will cost more. It always does. Once you start pulling tiles/wallpaper off, you might expose more issues. Buying an old home that hasn’t been well maintained is expensive. If you haven’t got the money lying around to dump into it you’ll find yourself trapped there.

Noticed this too. My parents live in a cul de sac of bungalows so there are obviously more probate sales there than you would normally get.

Every single one has seen the property on for well over a year before it sold. Ma knows that the NDN's DD's were determined to get what the EA told them it was worth. They ended up selling after 2 years on the market at 30% less than they wanted after rejecting offers much earlier that were about 5% less. Occupied houses sold much quicker and for more than the probates eventually went for. Greed cost them a lot!

The vendor is paying them but they negotiate for both sides. If they think the offer is unreasonable they would have said so. Also if they believe it’s reasonable they’ll be trying to talk the vendor into the deal.

Yeah, I presumed that with the plaster, but will wait on the report. It's brick base with the timber top, plus a couple of brick extensions over the years. House we have now was built approx 1840's, so we're well used to old properties.

Am not keen on new lighting trend then, if that's the case! Better to have the option of just having a lamp on than that being the only choice. The house is just in a bit of a state tbh, but we do have a buffer in money, no point in making ourselves vulnerable imo as old properties tend to have a snowball effect once start doing them up. I think that may be overlooked by the OP with borrowing to the max and no savings left.

Pay, or walk away!

Call their bluff, it's a battle of nerves at this point frankly.

FWIW, I think they're bonkers. We've been trying to sell an inheritance for over a year.

Well, if you can't afford to do the work, then you will have to walk away.

They would be silly to lose you but some vendors are silly and it depends how much they need to move.

Why would the estate agent help OP get money off the house they’re selling?!

The only problem with this is capital gains tax. My father died just before lockdown and the house sat there for 3 years pretty much. Because it's valued on probate, we had to pay the tax on the money it went up in the 3 years. You'll have the same unless you live in the house as your main property.

This exactly.

If I were selling I’d absolutely be on my guard for this behaviour and would not entertain it.

£10k is peanuts as a percentage of the value of the sale. 1.5%.

Sounds like you are just trying to get a bit of a discount post-survey rather than there be some big surprise which fundamentally impacts the value of the house.

Have my gutters cleared cost me £80- the damp and depending on how bad it is, could be anything but usually once the damp causing issue is fixed, an industrial dehumidifier works wonders- costs around £500. A new boiler is £2-3k- why ask for £10k? Unless there are other issues that have been highlighted.

If you think that a story about trying to buy a house and negotiating a slightly lower price based on a bad survey is worth making up, then you should read a few more threads. Trollhunting is against the rules, by the way.