Owning your own home

s there any point in contacting the freeholder before responding to find out if that's the case?

Yes - make it their problem.

I'd certainly go with 2 or 3. If it's the property I'm assuming it is then there's going to be a hell of a lot of work being done.

If it were me, I'd probably go with number 3 but speak to the freeholder and the other leaseholder (if they're not the same person) and arrange for one surveyor (hopefully for the freeholder to sort out) to cover all of your building.

I've used a surveyor a few times who covers that area if you want a contact.

EDIT: I don't think I was quite clear there. You should consent but the freeholder should go for 3 for the whole building. The whole building will be covered by that award but you don't need individual awards for the flats.

Anyone any experience of cookers? It's not a brand I've heard of before.

Since I'm a leaseholder, from what I've read the freeholder (company rather than individual) is very unlikely to consent and will insist on using their own surveyor. Is there any point in contacting the freeholder before responding to find out if that's the case?

Backing up what Howard says, it's the Freeholder's call, not yours, as they'll likely have responsibility for any shared items such as walls and rooves, rather than you as a leaseholder, who only has responsibility for your own demised spaces. If so, this is the Freeholder's deal.

Can I have a sense check from someone? We're close to purchase on a house which had a few things come up in the survey that we had looked into further by specialists - which ended up with us asking for a ~1.5% reduction on purchase price. These were things recommended by (for example) gas safe engineer/electricians as 'requiring urgent remedy' as well as a few bits of work to address condensation in the loft and minor penetrating damp.

Firstly - how reasonable is it to expect a reduction for such things? I know the answer is ultimately how long is a piece of string/how badly do we want the property - but we are trying to act in good faith, but without screwing ourselves.
Secondly - the estate agent has come back with a "non-negotiable" final figure which is way off from the reductions we asked for - "non-negotiable" is just estate agent guff right?

1st time buyers so don't know if the estate agent is just twisting the screws or if we're being unrealistic. We've had 2 fall through so really cba to lose this one.

Collins complete DIY manual

Just got a copy for £3 on ebay. I'll update the what are you reading thread with my review in due course ;)

@Brun your issue here would be if the Freeholder just consents. I suspect your lease may be like mine and you have responsibility for repairing roof, 1st floor walls, etc.

As such, I'd wait until you're sure that the Freeholder is going down the surveyor route before consenting (and if they do happen to consent then go down the surveyor route yourself).

As you say, how long is a piece of string.

My view is that if it's something that you could have picked up from the viewings or would expect from a property of that age/state of repair then a post-offer reduction is a bit cheeky. If it it could only be picked up by surveyor/expert and is unexpected then fair enough, try for a reduction.

People can be strange though, they've agreed a fee and aren't budging or maybe they have a bottom line figure for their next purchase and won't go lower. It's tough to make a call, you can probably push for lower but you may not get it.

Yeah, spoke to someone last night who suggested the freeholder may simply consent. Will check with them before deciding how to proceed.

Will have a look at the lease as well, have a feeling I might be responsible for the building. Remember my solicitor pointing out that was the case for the roof when I bought the place.

1.5%? What is the £ value?

It's all negotiable until you have exchanged contracts. Sometimes a buyer will essentially be saying to the seller, my offer of X was based on certain assumptions including that no (or minimal) work needed to be done, now that we've had a survey we can no longer afford X because we need to spend Y on the work so we can now only offer Z (often being X-Y as a starting point).

It depends how much the estate agent is on your side, how much the sellers need to achieve a certain price, and whether you're willing to play hardball. We negotiated on our purchase and the agent phrased it to the sellers as "the absolute max they can afford to spend is X" which wasn't exactly true, but it worked.

We have one with gas hobs and electric fan oven. It's lovely.

360 - we've asked for 6ish off.

now that we've had a survey we can no longer afford X because we need to spend Y on the work so we can now only offer Z (often being X-Y as a starting point).

this is essentially what we've said. good to know we aren't being unreasonable.

Barely worth it and the EA knows it hence hardball.

As in, barely worth pulling out over? Does that not go for both parties?

Equally £6k is a lot to cough up for works that seem essential (on top of the other house moving costs) but then the sellers' attitude will be we have lived there and it's fine so why should we pay for this work.

Absolutely - they've been there for ages as well.

To be honest we I was expecting some push back but wanted to make sure that we weren't being awful buyers - are trying to conduct ourselves in good faith, and had gone out of our way to obtain 'fair' quotes for everything - often getting independent reports at our expense, as opposed to people who were quoting to do the work.

Was there any prior negotiations before the agreed price? That can affect responses to further price reduction requests.

Would you feel hard done by if you accept £newasking? If so, was there anything removable in the house you wanted? Then OK we can pay that but we’d insist the thing/s are agreed as part of the sale might yield something.

Or go back with the figure you are happy with and say £figure - waiting to go, it’s a fair price, we can complete on date then hold on to your hats.

Not sure if it's standard practice, but we got a mortgage for the full value and then had an allowance on completion that came to us instead of the seller.

We'd asked for 1.4% but ended up with 0.7%, but it meant we had money to do things that needed doing.

Those options are different to the ones we had - the surveyor was appointed at their expense, and wasn't their architect. Maybe they didn't have an architect...

In any case definitely get a full survery done, and from experience I'd get it done by someone independent.

The main thing that we had to rely on (and pick them up on) was that stuff on our side of the wall had to be replaced with stuff that was the same material - as an example the brick wall they knocked down to extend had to be done in London stock bricks (which was what it was originally made of), not the cheaper ones that they wanted to use.

6k is a lot of money but it's nothing in when taking into account everything involved in house buying. The amount you've already spent in legal fees and surveyor costs plus the rent you'll pay whilst trying to find another place (then surveyor and legal fees again) will be far more than the 6k you're trying to save. So yeah, you should ask but if you really want the place then it's probably better to suck up the costs in the long run.

edit - above is me I'm assuming you're in London?

We're having this at the moment. Boiler that is >20 years old. Very low efficiency, out of production since 2001. Vendors are saying, but its worked for 17 years without any issues...

We are a long way below asking price though and we know we'll be replacing soon anyway - guess both side chancing their arm. I won't be letting the sale go because of it.

Just emailed the estate agent and offered to split the difference between our sum and theirs. We're acting in good faith, and can't (read could in an absolute sense, but not really) afford to bear the burden of doing it all ourselves on top of full offer.

We're at peace with the fact that we're happy to pay what our initial offer was if absolute needs be, but doesn't hurt to ask if - as you say - no-one really wants to walk away. Being mercenary about it, we are both on rolling rental contracts and 1st time buyers, they're in a chain and have a toddler- so they probably have more riding than us on it.

When a surveyor says 'essential' what they mean is 'fix it if you can be arsed'

Out of interest where was the penetrating damp from and what was the suggested remedy?