£1k of work identified by survey - ask vendor to pay?

[cakeywakey]

We've just had our survey back from a house we really want to buy. The house is sound except one area, the garage ceiling needs to be fireproofed to protect an extension above.

The work will cost around £1k which is a small percentage of the overall price (which is already less than the asking price). DH and I now need to decide whether to:

a. give the vendor the option to carry out the work
b. do it ourselves but ask for a £1k reduction in the price to reflect this
c. just sort it out when we move in and cough up for it ourselves

What would you do?

Is it a building regulation that they flouted or just a recommendation? If it's the former, I'd definitely get them to do the work, if the latter I think you could ask for a reduction and then you could split the cost

Could point it out and meet in the middle,£500?

If you really want the house and they have accepted less than the asking price, I'd be tempted not to quibble over £1k

Drop your offer price by a grand and explain that this is as a result of the work which needs doing, which was flagged up in your survey.

They could then get it done themselves if they could be bothered, first.

It would depend how long the house had been on the market for / what other interest there had been / how low the accepted offer is etc.

IMO, if you want the vendor to pay for it either directly or by reducing the price, you should give them a chance to carry out the works themselves and accept any delay to your purchase as a result. You may need to check your mortgage offer wll still be valid if you do this.

Personally, I'd probably get on with the sale and do the work myself.

Not sure Lady, just spoke to surveyor over phone. Will be a few days before I get the printed version.

Scurry, I think that's my inclination as well. Is it really worth splitting hairs?

TBH am really pleased that this is the only thing that's been found.

Used to be that people only knocked money off if the survey showed something really major.

Now people seem to try it for anything. It rarely works I think unless the seller is desperate. Is yours?

If not, then as LadyBiscuit says, if they actually flouted a building reg I think you could ask for it off, if not then I'd not press it.

Just checking back through the paperwork and the extension predates the vendors (so surely their survey would have shown it up when they were buying?)

It's not a mega-problem and I think that we will probably just end up sorting it out ourselves. I really don't want to hold the process up at all.

This is only the second house we've bought - the first being new build - so we're not really au fait with house buying etiquette

Surveyors also get bees in their bonnets over odd things. When we remortgaged in 2006, despite having had a mortgage on the property since 1992 when we bought it, and this never having been raised before, we had to have a mundic survey done at a cost of £500+, which showed that nothing was wrong. The house has been there since 1835, and there have been no problems with the extension at the back of the house, which was built well after the mundic problem was recognised, and therefore not constructed out of materials that may have been affected, and we had the docs from the Local Authority to prove it; but hey ho, what did we know?

I refused to use the firm the surveyor recommended though.....

Building regs may have changed since it was built and if it's illegal then you may find difficulties with your mortgage (did your survey go to your lender).

Don't have the published survey yet, just verbal confirmation. Will need to go back to surveyor and just check it out with him again by the sounds of it.

It's not a huge job - mainly installing insulation and plaster board - so I would hope that it's not sufficiently major enough to stop the mortgage in its tracks.

I wouldn't bother asking for such a piddling amount, it'll just sour relations with them.

In the overall picture, you're right Mumblechum that it isn't a lot of money. I think that we will just do it ourselves.

Although I wouldn't call £1k a piddling amount, but think that's my Mum talking!

Yes I have to say that when you're talking hundreds of thousands then a grand is bugger all!

I would say it depends on the circumstances. Whether you're paying less than the asking price is irrelevant. We offered a third less than the asking price on our house - and then asked for another £5K off when the survey identified problems with the roof.
The seller accepted - and given that in the year since almost no houses in our village have sold, I think they were right to do so (and that we were right in our judgement that the estate agents were massively over-valuing the properties in our area).
The key point is, I guess, that we would have been quite happy for the seller to pull out, as we were pretty certain that prices were going to fall further (and we were in rented accommodation, so no sale at our end).
And I would say that £1000 is a lot of money, if you think of how long it takes to earn it . . .

Circumstances couldn't be more different to the ones you've described Takver (love your hard ball tactics though!).