So, very close to exchanging con tracts on a house we want to buy, its an old Edwardian Town House type place, so we thought we’d better get a structural survey, just in case…..well its come back today and it says that a new roof is required – it looks like the tiles are very thin, probably original ones…and the fact there are buckets in the loft sort of give the game away that it isnt exactly watertight. He reckon s somewhere between £5-£10k to have it replaced. Is there a general rule of thumb on this as to how much should be knocked off the house price? Is it reasonable to expect a midway figure to be knocked off – so £7500? Any experiences of this sort of thing amongst the STW brain hive?

depends. does the current price reflect the obvious condition of the roof.

How much are you prepared to pay for it now you know? It’s entirely up to you.

You can offer what ever you like and they can accept whatever they like. Depends on the market. 50% would be a reasonable place to start maybe £5000 but go higher if you like. They can only say no.

You could try to haggle, but the seller might tell you to do one given it was probably entirely obvious that it was an old roof (which probably doesn’t need replaced, slates leak without a rear membrane, which no old house would have).

Totally depends on the price already agreed and how it reflects the condition and compares to similar local homes.

And also depends on how desperate you are to buy it and the seller is to sell it.

So water coming at you from the river and above? 150% discount and a weekly payment to compensate for stress.

Get a couple of quotes to give an idea of repair cost. Then reduce your offer. I assume the mortgage company are ok with the roof issue.

So water coming at you from the river and above?

Ah… maybe they’ve left it like that to let the flood water out?

have a go at getting a discount, why not, nothing to lose. How long was it on the market for before you offered? will they have trouble selling it again?

If you do go for a new roof get it done before you move in coz they make a hell of a mess in the attic when it’s done.

Yeah..coming at us from all angles – the flooding isnt the inital factor we thought – we had an independant surveyor do a risk assessment to take into account the flood defences already in place and the risk came back as very low – all the other reports failed to take the flood defences into account for some reason. Im going to go for a halfway figure and expect a discount of around £7500…i think its reasonable that if it comes back cheaper we’ll reimburse the seller the difference, i have no desire to fleece them.

I bought a couplbe of months ago. Survey pointed to £20k of work (10 of which was basically a basement conversion). Told them I wanted 10 off. They countered 5. Stuck to my guns and got 10 off.

See if I showed you a loft with buckets in it … I would expect that you realised the roof needed work and had taken that into account when making your bid ?

But of course, depends what the local market is like and the vendor’s circumstances

Good luck

Discuss with vendor but expect to have to get some proper quotes. Realistically best you can get to reduce the price by lowest quote but compromise would be 50%. Would seem unrealistic for the vendor to refuse to budge at all as a leaking roof doesn’t indicate a complete replacement is needed so he might not know just how bad it is.

The survey should say something along the lines of ‘given the condition of the property it is worth £xxx’.

Is the price you’re paying above or below that figure? Work from there…