Hi
My partner and i are buying a house. the survey report has come back and has suggested that the price we have offered is to high (it is in need of renovation and we have offered £118,000 while it has been valued by the survey at £114,000). Our solicitors have told us to offer a reduced purchase price to the estate agents directly and send them a copy of the survey if they ask for it. Can you tell me if this sounds like standard practice. A friend of ours in a similar position was advised by her solicitor to not pass the survey on to the vendor's estate agent under any circumstances and negotiated on her behalf. We seem to be being told very different advice and are not sure which advice is best?! Has anybody been in a similar position and could tell me how you managed the situation
thanks

Do NOT pass on your survey
Its yours and private as you paid for it
And of course if you pass this on thats your bargaining chip thrown away

Nobody has any right to see it
Do not be bullied into passing it on

OK

Are you sure you want to buy a house at the moment?

If you are then good for you

You are in an amazingly good position as most other people dont want to and your vendor must know this

If I were you, which Im not, Id be completely merciless

Tell the agent what you are happy to pay

Id steam in low to be honest, you can take a guess as to what your house will be worth in a year
Between 10-20% falls are widely predicted so bear this in mind

Having said that what was it on the market for?

If it was on at 118k and you offered that go much lower

If it was on for more then the vendor will get a bit cheesed if you mess them around but why not?
There are plenty of other sellers desperate for sales

Just because you paid 400 pounds for a survey doesnt tie you to buy it

Especially if its worth 20,000 pounds less in 6 months

Be careful and screw them over

Just my advice mind :)

And look it up on nethouseprices.com to see exactly what the seller paid and when

You may be suprised how much they have cashed in and how much the neighbours sold for

Good luck

Deepak

Given todays market, then personally I would approach the seller with a reduced offer. Their just aren't the number of buyers out there, so you are valuable to the seller. Also, remember that this will affect your mortgage offer, as this value is the one used to calculate the %age they will loan you (not your offer). You may have to borrow a greater %age of the value or fund the difference out of a larger deposit.

If the seller does want some sort of "proof" then I would just fax them the page with the valuation on it (and blank out other fields your don't want them to see).

I second what Dave said! Tell the estate agent/seller that you can't get a mortgage for the amount you originally offered due to the survey results. Definitely don't send a copy of the whole survey - just send the valuation page.

Why on earth shouldn't you let them have sight of the survey?

Be honest, tell them the issue, what you need to revise down to and don't try to be too smart - it has a habit of biting you in the bum.

If you don't provide them with a copy, you've got no proof as to the works that need doing, and therefore no reason to back up a low offer.

Not everyone is as desperate to sell as people make out, they may call your bluff and put the property back on the market (especially if it is reasonably priced in the first place and generated plenty of interest.

I would heed the advice of laceoldo21 here. Our house was only on the market for 4 days and attracted a lot if interest.

If you want the house, just be straight with everyone. Obviously there's an issue if the mortgage company won't give you a mortgage and you'd have to negotiate there - but if you're at 90% that shouldn't be a problem.

I would speak to the estate agents/vendors and offer the slightly reduced price and see what they say. If they won't budge you have to decide how much you want the house. That's what is important here.

thanks so much for everyones advice, really helpful. We have resisted sending the full survey to the agent but have sent one page which includes the advice that the property is not worth what we offered and the sale price should be re-negotiated. This isn't the valuation as such as we have offered slightly less than the valuation, given the current market etc. The estate agent is happy with this but depending on what the vendor says may come back to us for more info from the survey, so we are waiting to see!

Hi,

We are in a similar position and I was hoping people might have some advice for us. We have had an offer accepted for £110k on a house but the lender's valuation has come back at £!07k. The mortgage lender is also requiring us to get a damp and timber inspection as a condition of the offer. We haven't yet had our homebuyers survey back.

We want to go back to the vendor and renegotiate the price, based on the valuation, but should we wait for the survey before doing this? I think yes because we don't want to have to renegotiate once based on the valuation and then have to do it again if the survey throws up lots of problems. What do you think?

Thanks, Harriet

There's nothing worse than being in the dark and wondering what is happening so I'd just be honest, tell them what the valuation says, and tell them about the extra survey. I'd to it right away too. Unless they have another buyer waiting in the wings they should understand when they have had time to have a think about it.

I would personally wait for the homebuyers report to come back so you are clear exactly what you are willing to pay for the property based on all the facts. Despite the fact we had various trades people look at the house we are buying to give us an idea of the work that needed to be done and costs involved etc, the homebuyers report highlighted further defects that impacted on what the house is worth and what we were willing to pay for it. In the end, the vendors accepted £3,000 less than what the surveyor valued the house at (which incidentally was £15,000 less than what the estate agent valued it at) and we did not allow them access to the full report, as my post above describes. Hope this helps. It is a very stressful process but it is certainly a buyers market so try not to worry too much.

....we also had a damp and timber inspection by Higginbottom & Lascelles http://www.higginbottom-lascelles.co.uk/ who provided a really thorough report.

Thanks for the advice, if you don't mind me asking, how much did you pay for the damp and timber inspection?

Harriet

We are based just outside sheffield and it cost us £30, but its free if you are in Sheffield

is it free because they rely on finding problems and then fixing those problems?

We've had lots of quotes from all sorts of trades people and find that most offer free quotes. I'm sure Lascelles and Higginbottom found problems that weren't absolutely essential to fix but they were one of only a handful of registered company in sheffield we could find and the mortgage provider will prob want a quote from a company who is a member of the bwpda.