Re Negotiate house price after survey
Discussion
We have had an offer accepted on a house, we offered 10% under asking price based on other sold prices in the area and the fact that the house needs a lot of work, replacement windows, new bathrooms, new kitchen, garden and outside has just been left to rack and ruin. Garage illegally converted to annex which is single skin with tin roof.. so needs either updating to meet building regs or changing back to garage, electric gates broken, needs completely redecorating inc new carpets..., possible updateing of electrics. based on the above we made our offer stating all the above and after a little negotiating we went up £5000 and it was accepted, they said they would not reduce price any further unless something major structurally showed up in Survey, we agreed to this as we did not know the roof was so bad, the parts you can see are ok, its the flat roofs that are bad. We had the building survey done and it said dormers need re-roofing, it is a dormer bungalow and has 3 dormers one of which is massive. It wasn't a think about in the future recommendation, it said budget to re roof the dormers, we did not base our offer on any work on the roof, and the estate agent has the email to prove it. We had a roofer round who has priced the work at £9600. This is practically twice what we thought it might be worse case scenario.. We have asked the vendor to meet us half way with this cost. We did not want to and had already said if it was £5,000 we would just continue with the purchase and delay doing up something in the house until we can afford to do it, but nearly £10,000 makes the purchase nigh on impossible.. To me £10,000 pound on roof work is classed as major structural work, so they should consider our offer, is this unreasonable? We are well down the line with the conveyancing now, and hate the thought of it all going pear shaped, but we cannot pay out that kind of cash and do everything else that is required.
Doesn't sound unreasonable at all.
It's probably as much a surprise to the vendor as it is to you, sharing the cost is better than some will offer them. And now they know the condition, I think they would have to declare it , if they re-market, so any other buyer would be saying he same thing as you are now.
Hopefully they will see you rant taking the pee, and accept a reasonable offer.
It's probably as much a surprise to the vendor as it is to you, sharing the cost is better than some will offer them. And now they know the condition, I think they would have to declare it , if they re-market, so any other buyer would be saying he same thing as you are now.
Hopefully they will see you rant taking the pee, and accept a reasonable offer.
Perhaps a second quote is required.. only one of the dormers is around the 2*3 metres, the biggest is easily 8m long and 2m deep, all of the dormer roofs need to come off and have angles changed as sloping wrong, and new insulation put in to meet building regs, none of the dormers have gutters or adequate leadwork. The bedding of all the hips and ridges have to be replaced, and a tiny dormer we had not even noticed that i think goes into the loft has to be totally redone as the sides are covered in some sort of dodgy bitumen substance.... so quite a bit of work..
Sounds reasonable to me... it really fecks me off the amount of houses on the market that require major updating and the vendors / EA's expect to get top money when the current owners have barely spent a penny since buying...
Due to building control / current regs etc most works costs more than ever before, you're right to renegotiate!
Due to building control / current regs etc most works costs more than ever before, you're right to renegotiate!
Or.. alternatively, assuming the existing roofs have been there for years and have been largely sound until now, you could just get a local roofer round to re-cover and pay about £1000 all in for the 3 dormers. 
I had my dormer flat roof re-done a couple of years go, 2m * 6m, cost me (IIRC) £650 all in. Not leaked since!
I had my dormer flat roof re-done a couple of years go, 2m * 6m, cost me (IIRC) £650 all in. Not leaked since!
gittygoat said:
Perhaps a second quote is required.. only one of the dormers is around the 2*3 metres, the biggest is easily 8m long and 2m deep, all of the dormer roofs need to come off and have angles changed as sloping wrong, and new insulation put in to meet building regs, none of the dormers have gutters or adequate leadwork. The bedding of all the hips and ridges have to be replaced, and a tiny dormer we had not even noticed that i think goes into the loft has to be totally redone as the sides are covered in some sort of dodgy bitumen substance.... so quite a bit of work..
Definitely get a second and third quote, or get them to do their own as well.Most surveys will say a flat roof should be renewed, are they leaking? I suspect not, the price you have been quoted is excessive aswell If you want the house as stated you need to decide what price you can pay, it's not a new house so you can't complain if the flat roof is solid and watertight just not new.
Renovation said:
ClaphamGT3 said:
You are quite entitled to reduce your offer. They are quite entitled not to accept it. How much do you want the house?
^^^ThisBluntly is it worth half of £9600
I dont need to know what the house costs but this is likely to be a minimal percentage notwithstanding the fact that your surveyor is being a wuss
Vendor goes half = cost to you 4800
Vendor plays hardball = costs you an extra 4800 assuming the work needs doing
You must be in the hole for at least 1500 for survey and legal costs if you lose the sale
How much do you want the place?
Think all of the previous replies have covered it, but would just add this - when we bought our house last year, our surveyor (my father in law) spotted that one of the chimney stacks was structurally unsound and that the flat roofed areas needed replacement.
We mentioned this to our vendors and stated that we wanted to reduce our offer by an amount we thought was commensurate to the amount the works would cost. Initially they refused, so we advised that we'd regrettably need to pull out - this wasn't us playing hardball, it was simply that we wouldn't have been able to afford to rectify these issues.
What we did do however is talk to the vendors directly and make it clear that we weren't trying to mess them around. In the end, the vendors had the chimney fully rebuilt and the flat roofed areas replaced.
Talking to the vendor directly was so successful that we carried on in this way throughout the rest of the purchase. The subsequent completion was very smooth and we ended up on really good terms with the vendor.
We mentioned this to our vendors and stated that we wanted to reduce our offer by an amount we thought was commensurate to the amount the works would cost. Initially they refused, so we advised that we'd regrettably need to pull out - this wasn't us playing hardball, it was simply that we wouldn't have been able to afford to rectify these issues.
What we did do however is talk to the vendors directly and make it clear that we weren't trying to mess them around. In the end, the vendors had the chimney fully rebuilt and the flat roofed areas replaced.
Talking to the vendor directly was so successful that we carried on in this way throughout the rest of the purchase. The subsequent completion was very smooth and we ended up on really good terms with the vendor.
The vendor got back to us today, they have offered £2,500 towards the cost. We have gratefully accepted this offer as they could have just said bugger off, so any reduction is good, and we really didn't want to lose the house. So all good now and we can proceed. Thanks for all comments
Stamp duty is £80 as it stands so is basically irrelevant. The house we're looking at is 100 years old and needs a re-roof (~£8k) or repairing (~£3k). We're just unsure how to position it, its all well and good reducing the offer but at the end of the month we'll be £20 better off, which doesn't pay for a new roof.
Ideally the seller would go halves on a new roof but I don't think that is a realistic expectation.
Ideally the seller would go halves on a new roof but I don't think that is a realistic expectation.
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