Owning your own home

inb4 that doesn't exist

Our place is 1949. While not modern per se, it's been a lot nicer to work on and live in compared to a Victorian shitter

You're cutting your nose off to spite your face at this point if you walk away. If the house is fundamentally what you want then just reduce it by 8k and say this represents a contribution towards the (most expensive) quote you hopefully will get for a full reroof but you are absorbing most of it,and I am fairly certain they will come back and offer you 4k or so.

I also wouldn't worry about cracks here or there as long as the wall isn't bulging which presumably your surveyor would have commented on. I have cracks all over the place internally and externally as long as you can't get your hand in them it's unlikely to be a significant problem.

Doesn’t have bits of broken slate pretending to be a damp course and earth underneath the floorboards either.

I also wouldn't worry about cracks here or there as long as the wall isn't bulging which presumably your surveyor would have commented on. I have cracks all over the place internally and externally as long as you can't get your hand in them it's unlikely to be a significant problem

Whilst I might agree with you, there's no way my partner is going for that. Half the money is hers and she's not taking any risks.
And 4k wouldn't cut it. That wouldn't cover any of the work needed in full and as mentioned up thread, we don't have any more to put towards it so it would mean doing 4ks worth of patching up and just living with it. Along with the hassle of having to resell in 5 years with buyers surveys pulling up that it needs a new roof and rear wall that we haven't been able to afford to get done still. We either want it all fixed and sound for the price we offered for the house or we look for something else.

We either want it all fixed and sound for the price we offered for the house or we look for something else

there's no particularly good answer. They wont fix it up beforehand as it reduces what money they've got on hand if they're looking at moving elsewhere, and they have no guarantee you're buying the place even if they do fix it up. It's just risk for them

the money they've made on it over the last 10 years is irrelevant as place they're moving to has changed by at least that much as well. it's certainly irrelevant to you as a buyer

Figure out what number you think makes it fixed and sound and reduce your offer by it.
Then start looking elsewhere and if they choose to accept the new lower offer then great.

Or be a nob and proceed then chip at the last minute. Not being judgy about that as the system here doesn't do anything to disincentivise it, and they could always be a nob too, accept a lower offer and keep looking for a better offer in the meantime

I'm sure you have thought about this already but any money you put towards the works is coming off your mortgage deposit and negatively impacting your ltv.

It sounds like the right choice.

It doesn't sound like owning an old house is for you then (or perhaps more accurately your Doris). Which is fair enough. They all need work one way or another and all need constant maintenance (and money).

For sure they do and we are both happy to do that, we just want to know about it going into it and have the money available to do it. With this one sadly that's not going to be the case. But a valuable lesson learned I reckon. We need to budget for the work that's hiding in every house

You're cutting your nose off to spite your face at this point if you walk away

I agree, to an extent. This is their opportunity to get negotiating experience.

@PhilDAS Get back to the EA with a revised offer. Best guess. i.e. worst case £20k to fix the lot (wall, chimney, roof). They might tell you to do one, they might not. Take it from there. If you've already decided to sack it off, there's no harm in it.

This is their opportunity to get negotiating experience

@PhilDAS Get back to the EA with a revised offer

also this. the buyer may well know the house needs work and are hoping that they'll get someone that's willing to overlook it
If you think it needs 20k, you could always offer 30k less, expecting they'll refuse but at least anchoring the offer somewhat, then if it's still on the market in a couple of months come back having miraculously found 10k and you're willing to go up to just 20k under the asking which wont look like you're lowballing because it's up from where you were

don't be too British about it. worst case, you make an offer the sellers are offended by and they have a grumble behind closed doors about it

As others have said, work out what you can afford (taking into account a good estimate of work needed) and offer that.

Don't worry about getting an amazing deal, if you're going to live there for a few years then over/underpaying by a few grand is pretty irrelevant compared to a bit of extra rent or just owning your own place. Pay what you're happy with.

But if you can't afford to get the work done after buying you can't afford it. I spent a fair chunk of time convincing my estate agent that my budget was my budget and if they wanted to make the sale then that was all the money that was there.

Don't stretch yourself, you'll regret it. But don't give up due to a few grand if it is realistic. Work out what you can afford, maybe knock a small contingency off, and tell the agent they need to make the deal at that or you're done.

Same this side - ours is 1930s and while I always wanted a Victorian terraced, houses were definitely built differently after that period. You can tell our house was designed with an indoor toilet in mind!

I'm getting a new consumer unit installed ahead of more electrical works next year. Is there anything I should know about consumer units or be specific with the electrician about beyond ensuring it has enough spare capacity for extra circuits?

From what I've read there's nothing revolutionary in the consumer unit marketplace beyond surge protection currently. I had thought about some kind of smart device that might give me stats on what's using what but I don't think that's really a thing yet and probably more sensible to do on sockets if we go down that route.

Pulled out of the purchase. Man what a relief. It was really weighing on me if I'm honest

Good decision

From what you posted here, that seemed like the right move - always good to have a decision made.

Well done.

Following a survey today, I've had to do the same. The surveyor literally said don't buy this house :'(

Sad, frustrating, but also nice to know I'm not going into the abyss

It's really hard walking away, but sound like the right choice in this situation.

Been there in similar circumstances before.
Offer accepted, dogshit survey, seller wouldn't negotiate, withdrew.

Left it on a good note with the agent who understood our budget included works needed doing.
Was very picky about what we'd go and visit after that.
Hardly visited anything as we knew exactly what we wanted.
About 6 months later the exact something came up.
Same agent!

They knew we were serious so managed to get in as the first people to see it.
Offered and accepted under asking at a price we knew seller would accept due to good relationship with agent.

Note: I didn't like the agent AT ALL, but understood the value of being on the right side of them.

Not rocket science.
We've had a couple installed, one in house, one in shed.

We asked electrician for their advice, they were able to get it under retail price.

There are smart consumer units but you don't want one, for usual internet-of-shit reasons - it'll tie you to a shitty app platform and you'll wake up one day in the not very distant future and find the manufacturer has decided your model is obsolete and unsupported and they'd like you to buy a new one.

Some regulations are starting to phase in Arc Fault detectors (AFDDs) in high risk buildings, which are supposed to detect arcs caused by loose wires or bad connections which is how some fires start. But they're expensive (£100/breaker) and from what I've seen
incredibly hard to trip, which makes them useless.

Thanks both. Keep it simple then.

We're getting ours replaced. Existing thing is from the 80s and has an entire 3 bad flat on 5 circuits. Relevant bits from the quote:

"
Replace the existing fuseboard with a new 10-way 18th edition consumer unit with all RCBO and SPD protection. This will provide 5 spare ways for future additions.

...

Wylex NM1006LS 10 Way Consumer Unit with 100a Main Switch + Type 2 SPD
"

So yours is the old 'fusebox' type? Do you know if it's just 1 circuit for 1 fuse? Just trying to work out what we have and what we might need in the mid-to-long-term in order to make sure he specs something big enough.