Reply to: How flexible to be when your buyer asks for work based on survey?

[jimjamuk]

Tell them you will go halves on it - get in a leccy and get the job done at a local rate and pocket any change

[d000hg]

Probably true. Though if you've committed to buying somewhere, you equally are not going to mess up your new house purchase over £500

[RetSet]

A typical buyer might have a no completion-no-fee solicitor and no up-front mortgage costs, and have spent a few hundred on a survey and a bit more on searches. You might as well say the seller has money invested in their own fees, and in the house-move they've themselves committed to.

And the purchaser (or more likely, the purchaser's wife) will have already planned out where all the furniture is going, how Little Johnny's room will be decorated, and told all family & friends about 'the new house'.

In short, the purchaser will have invested a massive amount of emotion in the deal.

I said it before, and I will say it again. If the purchaser walks it's because he was going to walk anyway. The £500 is irrelevant.

[d000hg]

STS is to cover material issues. £500 is a trivial amount. If the buyer really wants the house he'll suck it up. He's already spent multiple times that amount on the survey, legals, mortgage costs etc.

A typical buyer might have a no completion-no-fee solicitor and no up-front mortgage costs, and have spent a few hundred on a survey and a bit more on searches. You might as well say the seller has money invested in their own fees, and in the house-move they've themselves committed to.

[RetSet]

Yes. The price isn't agreed "as is". The sale is agreed "subject to survey". If the survey turns up something untoward, then the ball is generally put in the seller's court as to whether they want to contest the issue, drop the price and let the buyer fix it or have it fixed themselves and keep the price as it is.

STS is to cover material issues. £500 is a trivial amount. If the buyer really wants the house he'll suck it up. He's already spent multiple times that amount on the survey, legals, mortgage costs etc.

Buyer has sunk costs on the line.

If he pulls out for the sake of £500, he wouldn't have gone ahead anyway.

HTH

[LondonManc]

Bought 17, sold 9.

That's an interesting question you raised. May I ask you why you asked it?

Yes. The price isn't agreed "as is". The sale is agreed "subject to survey". If the survey turns up something untoward, then the ball is generally put in the seller's court as to whether they want to contest the issue, drop the price and let the buyer fix it or have it fixed themselves and keep the price as it is.

[RetSet]

Have you ever bought a house?

Bought 17, sold 9.

That's an interesting question you raised. May I ask you why you asked it?

[LondonManc]

In that case it's worth you going through the list with your electrician or builder who you trust and asking which are mandatory. to replace the PCB three years on is stupid.

[d000hg]

Well with gas & electrics if you don't have a current safety certificate they'll certainly say "it should be inspected". Which is reasonable, except with electrics it's quite likely to come back with a really worrying list of issues if the wiring is 3 years old, let alone 23.

Obviously you want to catch genuine safety issues like an RCD not tripping, my scenario seems to simply be they've told the buyer that everything identified "needs" doing, so they have in turn asked me to remedy it. Which on the buyer's part is reasonable based on what they've been told.

[LondonManc]

Surveyors flag up anything they can't see to cover their own backsides.

[quackhandle]

Problem is few surveyors say things like electrics and gas are fine.

Yes, very true.

qh

[chopper]

When I bought my ~25 year old house 18 months ago, the Homebuyers report came back saying the surveyor hadn't had sight of an electrical certificate and therefore recommended an inspection.

I elected not to bother with the inspection, after all it was a 25 year old house. It wasn't suddenly unsafe, there is no requirement to bring all existing house up to current standards.

That said, I had the consumer unit replaced a few weeks ago (cost: £260) because I was wiring an outbuilding into it. He initially said full unit replacement was unnecessary but later suggested an upgrade because breakers were hard to come by (fact - I had tried myself and could only find used breakers in eBay) and it would allow us to consolidate a whole board of stuff (a separate unit for the electric shower was in place) into a single unit. At the same time, the sparky also created a new ring for the electrics in my garage rather than them being on the main downstairs ring.

The points here being that a) £500 is expensive, b) for a 10 year old house the electrics will not be affecting the value if they are in a good state of repair and you haven't done anything seriously shonky with them, c) they are better getting it done themselves if they really must, because they might want to do something different with it later and d) they are first time buyers, so they don't know what they are on about. They probably don't have a spare £500 in the budget to perform an unnecessary piece of work.

[SueEllen]

My mother had similar issue when my uncle died and she was selling his old house. Buyer had a "roofer" mate and said the roof is substandard and three grand will need to come off the asking price, before they would purchase.

I told mater to ask the buyer for her for proper RISC Survey that she had "obvously" done.

Sale when through at asking price.

qh

Problem is few surveyors say things like electrics and gas are fine.

[LondonManc]

AS-is applies to obvious defects and general condition. The whole point of having surveys and safety inspections is to discover things which are not evident to the naked eye.

Correct. The key to this is whether the work is deemed a blocker to them agreeing to buy at the fee that was agreed "subject to survey". We walked away from one house purchase because there was £10,000 worth of work turned up in the survey and they graciously offered to drop the price by two grand.

[d000hg]

Everybody is missing the obvious.

The price agreed is 'as is'.

If he wants £500 worth of work doing before he moves in, the price becomes +£500.

AS-is applies to obvious defects and general condition. The whole point of having surveys and safety inspections is to discover things which are not evident to the naked eye.