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Was it visually apparent that the place was a bit...fucked? Like was is obviously neglected / in disrepair?
Howard-
In short - no.
There was a small amount of localised damp on 2nd floor in the hall, which we could see, and were made aware of by the EA, but didn't look bad.
We were also told it might need rewiring.The place was immaculate and it was not obvious, nor was it discussed, that there might be significant other work needing doing. We were obviously budgeting for a bit of other stuff though, given the size and age of the house. But not this scale of stuff.
Interestingly,when the builder went round he said that the seller told him she was aware that the gable render might need doing, and had made plans to do it, but had opted to move.
We kind of took this as a sign that she knew how much that might cost and that the price would need to drop.
Also when we received the homebuyer report and it had flagged all these things, but before the quote came in, I spoke to the EA who said the seller was very keen to proceed with us and there would be scope for negotiation on price.
All this led us to believe a significantly lower offer might be acceptable, or at least a starting point for a decent negotiation. Seems not...
t4ny4
Fark.
Things are unraveling on our purchase a bit.
Original asking price was £250k. Ended up offering £10k over in order to get it, as there was another offer.
It ended up with us being accepted, based on us being the most likely to proceed, plus that the vendor apparently didn't want it to continue as a bidding war and had been happy to just get the asking price.
Fast forward several weeks and the survey flagged a load of fairly significant works, mainly damp related - damp on all floors, lack of DPC, leaking roof, render on whole gable wall (3 storeys) needing replaced, chimney leaking, the list goes on.
We had a builder in who quoted ~£28k for fixing the immediately necessary bits, and we estimate there's another £15-20+k to get the house properly sorted on top of that.
We went in low, taking £32k off our offer.
EA has come back saying that vendor will only drop £5k and is prepared to go back on the market or to the other party that originally offered.
We were expecting a level of negotiation, but only dropping £5k (which is then still £5k over what she had originally be 'happy with') seems like a total piss take.
Grrrrrrr. Time for some hard ball on our part I think.