Owning your own home

I know Redrow didn't accept offers but were usually willing to chuck in bunch of stuff like carpets/turf and might be willing to pay your LTT.

Question, do people negotiate on new builds or just accept the asking price?

People negotiate. I bought a new build in 2001 and the person who bought the mirror image next door got a much better deal. They also sold for more later. Apparently I'm ahit at that kind of thing and they are good at it

I don't think it's always that straight forward though.

Sure people might know their property, and that there's nothing major. But as a new buyer how do you know what's 'just routine', and also what's the cumulative total? If all buyers knew there was say £15k cumulatively of routine maintenance upfront would they have made the offers they did?

Let's take this case as an eg. Sounds like the purchaser was trying it on for routine maintenance, right?

But whatshischops has basically said that there is actually a damp problem. And the solution is what?

... ripping the floor up, smashing out a load of concrete, stripping the wall back to the tanking, redo the floor, redo the tanking, replaster the wall, repaint?

What's the hive's finger in the air quote for that work?

So actually the survey probably flagged damp that isn't routine maintenance.

Happy to be corrected if I'm missing something.

I guess I'm speaking as a former first time buyer who asked for a discount for what was probably maintenance, but equally also probably overpaid and didn't negotiate as well as we should.

Part of that was being niave. Part was also being told one of the couple had terminal cancer, which then meant we felt we couldn't make other asks.

Wait what they were selling houses with no carpet and no grass? Did they finish putting the windows in or was that extra too??

Agree about the survey, the way I look at it is that anything that is obvious then you can’t ask for a discount!? if it needs carpeting/flooring/new boiler/windows etc then it takes one look to know this. You knew what you were offering on.
If the survey reveals a dodgy chimney removal/sagging purlins etc then that’s an entirely different matter.

Not had any chancers myself but they would have that explained to them if they tried it on.

Yeah usually they just come with base coat and bare floors. Sounds preferable to undoing other people's dubious interior design decisions tbh. No turf is pretty standard too, I guess some people prefer paving/plastic stuff.

Which is why we gave them money off for the damp. I'm not giving away free money to pay for a fascia upgrade and scaffolding.

isn't this all just price discovery?

essentially the buyer is trying to discover the lowest price at which they can complete the purchase. in most cases, the reason given for the lowering of the offer is irrelevant.

Isn't just the feature of a crappy system where you offer a price for something that you don't know the condition of beyond a cursory glance

I get it, and I'm not having a pop. I also recognise that part of this thread is venting as well as advice so sorry for fucking with that.

I just disagree with some people's take, and think that on balance your situation supports that.

I don't really see it that way - how much do you want to know about it? if you are buying a Victorian house, for example, it's safe to assume that most of it is shot to f***.

You could spend a lot of time, effort and money trying to quantify exactly how bad it is, but to what end?

The other problem with not being able to tell the quality of a victorian property on sight is a lot of well maintained properties don't attract a big premium so there's less incentive for people climbing the ladder to repair responsibly.

I think most of you are underestimating the value of your experience as homeowners. What seems obvious to a person who has worked with tradesmen and done a bit of DIY is not obvious to a renter who has never been allowed to do any of that. Yeah, you can identify that the avocado bathroom is old but you aren't likely to have a good idea about boiler reliability or the costs of redecorating or whether you need to worry about subsidence.

So if you don't know anything about houses you're reliant on the survey and your solicitor, for which you've paid a shitload of money. The survey will almost certainly say "this house has damp and it may be 100% fucked" and your solicitor might advise you to try and knock money off. You obviously follow the advice of your hired professionals on the most expensive purchase of your life to date.

The clue's in the name basically: they're first time buyers, of course they don't know what they're doing. They'll always be part of the market so it's just something that has to be tolerated

I don't really see it that way - how much do you want to know about it? if you are buying a Victorian house, for example, it's safe to assume that most of it is shot to f***.

You could spend a lot of time, effort and money trying to quantify exactly how bad it is, but to what end?

So do you not bother getting a survey at all then?

In my own case, I have much less of a problem with my buyer asking for money off than I do the fact they sat on the information for 3 months.

I mean they didn't even order searches FFS.

Yeah - that's just waiting for everyone in the chain to be committed, presumably planned some time ago.
I don't think I'd be able to bring myself to do that.

I bought one place without a survey. The other times I had surveys done but can't say they added much to what was already quite apparent.

Could be that as @frankenbike days above, I have somewhat assumed the "benefit" of having owned, repaired, paid people to repair houses for the last going on 30 years. I realise not everyone will be in this situation.

I guess my starting point is that all properties, even new ones, will need work on them sooner or later.

Don't mortgage providers usually stipulate a survey?

Depends on things like LTV but might only be a desktop/drive-by survey.

We didn’t get a survey on our 60s bungalow as we knew it had rats, leaky roof and asbestos but gave a local builder a bottle of wine to look round and confirm it “wouldn’t fall down” …

Sorry but I fucking hate these "ask a builder to look at it" anecdotes.

People trying to get >£100k150k extensions can barely get builders out to bend them over. Which fucking FTB is going to be able to get a builder over to loose a couple of hundred quid of his time to have a look at a property the FTB might be thinking of buying?

Eh? Just commenting on what we did, not necessarily recommending that is what anyone else should do.
Then after 3 years living in a shithole paid for an architect , structural engineer, topographical survey, structural survey, bat survey, 2x planning submissions, 7 month build and gave the government £50k in vat.
Pleased we didn’t waste another few hundred on a survey initially.

It's like advise to see you GP for some minor thing.

We had an energy efficiency survey done, but I'd strongly consider not doing one next time as surveyors/businesses just don't put in the professional effort anymore. It's all desk/drive by checking with binoculars, you don't get much information beyond the obvious/common sense.