What should an estate agent disclose when asked?

[FromthefireintoWhat]

We’ve already had one sale fall through, with no purchase at the end of it, after the vendors wouldn’t budge on price once the surveys came back. I’m a bit gutted, as we’d paid for the survey and ended up with nothing, but in hindsight it may have saved us from buying a property with risks attached.

we’re now back to square one and looking to offer on another place, possibly a doer upper which has been on market for a while.

What does an estate agent actually have to tell you if you ask? For example, do they need to share the findings of a previous survey, or just confirm that one was done? And if there have been previous offers or sales that fell through, do they have to explain why?

what is reasonable to ask, and what do the EA have to tell?

I've no idea what they have to tell you, but tbh I was really disappointed in their general lack of knowledge and awareness when we were last buying a house. Absolutely no idea of the answers to basic questions, like how much is the leasehold a year, or how old is the boiler. And this was across three different agencies. You would think they would have a file to refer to for each property.
So they probably wouldn't know specific house queries if you asked, they would have to phone the office.

More specific to your post, they do not have to share anything about a survey but people who have had the survey done might sell you it if you ask, but I would always get my own done.

They will probably lie at least by omission if you ask about previous sales.

We found it helpful to have an actual conversation with the surveyor after we had seen the report, lots of things looked terrible but he said actually that will be fine for many years yet. So don't go bonkers asking for a discount based on it unless it's actually highly priced for the area.

We've bought a doer upper and tbh I underestimated how much the costs of things like skips were, we would probably have been better off waiting for a different property, although we have bought in a nice area because of it.

An estate agent’s job is to put someone who wants to buy, in touch with someone who wants to sell and then progress the sale to completion. A good agent will find out certain things about your house and should know about the EPC, the lease length, whether things have been serviced and some information about the systems in the house, when showing potential buyers.

They should tell you if there’s been previous offers or surveys done. If they were told anything from a previous survey then they should disclose this to you as well eg if the survey found asbestos then they would need to tell you this. They won’t have access to the survey unless the previous buyers gave it to them, so can only go off what has been told to them. Basically if they know something that would affect your choice to buy the property then they should tell you - otherwise it’s a breach of the consumer rights regulations as it would be misleading. However, they way the phrase this can sometimes be a bit confusing as they may try to downplay an issue!
Your best bet is to ask if there’s been any previous offers, surveys, the results of the surveys, why the sale fell through, the sellers position eg if they have already found another property, whether they’re open to offers.
They can only tell you what they have been told though. Obviously they won’t know if there’s something like woodworm if it’s never been flagged in any previous surveys or if the owner hasn’t told them etc.