Hey all.
Finally in my 40s I’m fortunate enough (with a lot of family help & a mortgage) to be buying a home. It’s end-of-terrace; just spoke to the surveyor today after he’s done most of the inspection and he’s found a lot of structural problems.
Feeling a bit defeated, it’s taken so long to get to this stage of having an offer accepted, and being close to exchanging contracts. It’s an old house so while I wasn’t expecting it to be fault-free, I’m quite disappointed and I guess looking for some advice / reassurance.
Not got the report in text yet but he mentioned potential subsidence; rising damp; cracked walls; problem with the chimney stack; window frames; and others. Said it’s all stuff that can be fixed, but potentially expensive. My plan is to wait for the text report next week, then contact the estate agent and attempt to negotiate a price reduction in line with the cost of the repairs, which imo will run into at least £15k. Considering it’s on the market for £85k, and the owner wouldn’t even put the electric on for viewing because she didn’t want to pay £1 a day standing charge, I’m anticipating some pushback.
But, should I even bother? Is this ‘sunk cost fallacy’ at play? I certainly feel like if they’re not prepared to negotiate re repairs then I have to walk away as I could buy a well-maintained property round here for the total cost of around £100k!
Any advice much appreciated.
This is in the US so your experience obviously may differ but we recently bought a house that needed a completely new roof. We actually had to back out of the deal once because the seller refused to pay any portion of the roof. It took the house sitting on the market for another 3 months before they finally agreed to cover just half the cost of a new roof and at that point we were tired of looking and just wanted a house so we accepted the offer. Our new roof looks great and we’re happy with the house but paying for half of a roof was an expensive add-on to the purchase for sure.
That’s funny - not your roof troubles but that they came crawling back in the end, because they must’ve found that every other buyer was similarly unhappy about the roof. My dad had the same thing trying to buy a house last year, they wouldn’t accept his bid then came back months down the line to accept it… at which point my dad reduced his offer again by 5k haha.
I am definitely going to make the point to the estate agent (who was boasting she could’ve sold the house 10x over), that all other buyers are going to have a survey carried out and discover the same serious issues. So if the seller and her are serious about selling the house, then they need to sell it for a serious price that reflects those serious issues!