Owning your own home

Thanks, any thoughts on REHAU?

I wouldn’t discount uk products, they are not all shit.
Had Platinum NRG upvc triple fitted at my old place and looked at some aluminium before the Dulwich Estate said the Crittall had to stay.
25k for rationel 14k for Aluk / Reynaers with pilkington K glass. There’s a few UK manufacturers making their own extrusions, lots of info at aluminiumtradesupply website.
There’s a lot of mediocre upvc out there.

Whether they are nice chaps or not, there are some fairly serious H&S legislation breaches in that one photo alone. It's not the landlord who is doing the building work, it's those nice chaps who are putting lives at risk.

@PhilDAS yes you would make the right decision to walk away if your demand for a price adjustment is not met. Sounds to me like the asking price factored in the heavy work needed (EAs generally know ).
Generally as a buyer you must prepare yourself to be disappointed at any stage until you get the keys, as said above there will be other houses, and 6 months is nothing.

We got Everest upvc sash windows about 3 years ago and they've been grand. They even replaced the trim around a massive bay window in our bedroom after our builder unceremoniously ripped it all off, thinking they could just get any old shit and stick it on. Did that free of charge. Also, now is a good time to get quotes as every sales person will be trying to hit their number. We got our quote around this time of year and it was less than half of RRP (and cheaper then a few local places) in the end.

The surveyor is never ever going to say the roof is lovely and straight and perfect. The surveyors job is to shit over everything and protect his own arse when doing so.

Unless the house is enormous then a new roof isn't a life changing amount of money. For a standard victorian house it's likely to be between 8-10k if you can find a one man band who will do it for cash.

The best case scenario is you knock the seller for 2 or 3 grand, hope it lasts another year or 2 with a little patching up, and save up the 6k you'll need to do the work in the meantime.

Sure ask for the lot as a discount but you're not buying a show home or a new house*

*This now reminds me of my buyer trying to get ten grand off me for windows that were 15 years old, rainwater goods that were 7 years old. I had to get the deal done so I ended up giving him 2.5k off but there was no way he was getting ten grand off me.

This is a negotiation now, so negotiate. You'll both end up unhappy whatever the outcome here and in some ways that is the mark of a roundly successful negotiation exercise.

This is a negotiation now, so negotiate. You'll both end up unhappy whatever the outcome here and in some ways that is the mark of a roundly successful negotiation exercise.

Pyrrhic compromise.

You guys should never lay eyes on building sites east of Germany then :D

Elf n wot?

I visit large building sites on a regular basis in the UK. The one in the pic is exceptionally bad. at Uni, I laboured on building sites in my holidays, I never came across one as bad that that one.

Yes, i might have a heart attack seeing ones east of Germany.

I think flipside of this is that a first time buyer will likely have sunk all their available cash into deposit and house, so having to pay for new roof/major repairs because your ceiling/wall is pissing water isn’t a small ask when you don’t have the money.

We often did school holidays with a builder friend in Oz. Dad and 3 boys + their dad and 4 boys = lots of cheap labour :D

I think most kids of a certain age and especially from country towns wonder how they made it to adulthood alive. :)

For a standard victorian house it's likely to be between 8-10k if you can find a one man band who will do it for cash.

Seems optimistic tbh - replacing just the flat portion of our roof was about £7k a couple of years ago and just getting a roofer out to patch things up over the next few years will be £1-2k each time.

If the roof is truly screwed, it's time for the estate agent to earn his fee, do a bit of work for the sale and talk his client's price down.

time for the estate agent to earn his fee

LOLZ

Right - maybe he/she will, maybe not.

I've found they're pretty protective of their commision once they have a buyer lined up, it doesn't make much difference to them if the price comes down 20K or whatever - it might be a lot less effort for them to talk their client into it than trying to remarket the house to a new buyer.

Yeah, they said they have no more money.

I was thinking at least £15k for the roof, with the chimney repairs etc, its not just batons and tiles, its the roof beams also?

Flat roofs are a money pit on an entirely different scale to conventional roofs though.

In 2017 I had the front of my old house in leytonstone reroofed as part of a loft jobby.

New felt, battons and Redlands came to 1400 cash together with waste disposal.

Now that was 2017, part of a bigger job and the scaffolding was up already.

If we assume the house is similar and things have doubled since then and the cost of the skip/scaffold isn't discounted/incidental -id be pretty miffed if I couldn't get the front back outrigger done, dodgy joists replaced for about 8k give or take.

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Estate agent phoned today. The guy dealing with it is off at the moment so his colleague rang to see what's what. I thought the main guy was a bit unreasonable so was looking forward to speaking to someone else there but if anything they were worse. Pretty blunt and rude. They asked if I'd got quotes for the roof yet and reiterated that the sellers weren't going to pay the full amount but would negotiate a compromise.
I said that yes, I had contacted a couple of roofers but I haven't heard back from them yet, they haven't been too responsive and in any case, I'm more concerned about the rear wall and that I think the fact that the window and door below the crack are the only ones that haven't been double glazed shows that there is a structural issue that needs to be addressed before they can be swapped. They said "well you can't say that, that's just your opinion"...
I said "yes of course it's just my opinion, but that's why we want to get someone in to look at it and quote for repair"
They said again the seller isn't going to pay for all this
I said "we're not asking the seller to pay for the repairs, we're saying that the house is worth less with this work needed"
They said "well I don't know about that, that's just your opinion"

Felt like banging my head against a wall.

They then basically told us to hurry up with the threat of "when you put your offer in on the house, there were several other parties interested in seeing the house and many of them are still looking so if things don't progress soon, we will have no choice but to open it back up to the market"

Safe to say, I think we're walking away from this one.
What's also pretty annoying is this particular agent basically has a monopoly on the local area so no doubt we will have to deal with them on the next place we try to buy and I can't imagine they will treat us too favourably

"open it back up to the market"

lol

Shit is never off the market for agents. If they received a higher offer five minutes before exchange they'd be all over it.

Shit is never off the market for agents. If they received a higher offer five minutes before exchange they'd be all over it.

Well, they are duty bound to forward on offers to the sellers.

You are showing too much of your hand to the estate agents. Because you are a decent, reasonable person you expect estate agents will behave reciprocally. They will not.

A good way to change the negotiation dynamics is with 'the cost of expected works is too great and I anticipate you will not accept my revised offer, so we will withdraw'. That will put them in the position of asking you what you are prepared to offer then.

Never disclose your surveyors report or what you have actually been quoted itemised.

However they have framed it, it comes down to what price their sellers will accept. Clearly they don't have a red hot buyer waiting in the wings or they would have moved on already.

True, perhaps the one thing they actually do when legally obliged to

In this case the idea that they're turning buyers away after an offer has been made is laughable.

Reckon you've 100% made the right decision @PhilDAS. Never know, if you're still looking in six months this one might come up again, with a substantial drop in price once they've had a few experiences like yours.

“Felt like banging my head against a wall”

We all have to go through this, it’s part of the initiation.
That said I banged my head repeatedly on the desk as didn’t want to put a dent in the stud wall.

Don’t stress, you will be looking at paint charts and door handles soon enough.

Never know, if you're still looking in six months this one might come up again, with a substantial drop in price once they've had a few experiences like yours.

The thought has crossed my mind.
I think we'll steer closer to a modern building and keep dreaming of the victorian town house for later in life.
Either than or buy something cheap and honest that needs a bunch of work but at least admits it.