Hi everyone,

Offer accepted on house but the survey has brought up some issues, mainly with the double glazing; it appears that approx 50% of the units need replaced.

Should we amend our offer to take this into consideration?

Cheers in advance, and happy new year!

Yes.

Or wait until the mortgage valuation devalues it further…

I would, at the end of the day the bank require the survey, so if it shows things that devalue the property, then the bank may not lend you the full amount.

You’d be lucky to get anything knocked off for that I reckon..
Depends how desperate they are to sell I guess?

Yes, we did and knocked a further £7k off

It really depends how it’s been valued. EAs should take things like the condition of windows etc into account. If it had brand new windows, you would expect the asking price to be a bit higher, right?

How much do you want the house, is the question, and how happy are you with the price? Don’t get sucked into saving pounds for its own sake, the goal is to get the home you want at a price you want.

That’s why you pay for a survey, we got 10k off of the agreed sale price due to issues found during the survey. Renegotiate, they can only say no.

Where are you? What’s the market like? Round our way it most likely wouldn’t wash, but this will differ around the country.

Personally I wouldn’t expect to renegotiate because of blown sealed units – I’d have hopefully spotted them while viewing and any offer would have taken that into consideration. It’s possible your vendor would be of the same opinion.

Surely it depends on what it’s worth to you? I’m only a ftb and my offer has been accepted at well below market value – the survey brought some expensive things up, however, it’s still well worth the purchase price, it’s a straightforward sale and the house could easily fetch more (around 10k) even with the survey results pinned to the front door.

Venor knows it’s cheap, I know it’s cheap, we’ve discussed things face to face and reached amicable agreements on the initial offer. To start trying to negotiate further would just p*** him off and probably give him every right to start entertaining other offers.

..but that’s just my circumstances of course.

Depends on the state of the house to begin with. And depends on the amount you want to revise the offer.

If it obviously needed work to modernize it then you should have budgeted new windows before you made the offer. As a seller I’d think you made an offer you had no intention of paying and if selling quickly wasn’t an issue I’d tell you to go jump.

In the past, however, I’ve agreed to a lower price as wanted to complete but wasn’t too happy. If a house is over 100 years old then trying to revise your bid down about stuff that obviously isn’t the same standard as a new build is a bit late in the day in my view. It’s stressful enough without being held to ransom in the last stages.

If it looks immaculate but turned out to be poor quality then I guess you have a case.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. We are in Brighton where that market is pretty buoyant, and both my partner and I love the house and wanted it as soon as we saw it. Happy with what we’re paying and got a fair amount off the asking price which had been reduced anyway as the house had been on the market for over 3 months before we saw it – only with an online agent though.

We have met face to face with the vendor and I think they ‘need’ to sell more than we need to buy, but as mentioned we love the house and plan on being there for the next 20 years.

Think we’re happy as we are.

Thanks all for the replies.

Good luck!

Oh and also – surveys often sound like the house is a disaster zone. If that’s all that was raised then that sounds pretty good really!

Windows can be sorted when you have the time/money. In reality they could last for many more years without any problem at all. I’d only be getting really fidgety if there were structural concerns raised.

As above. Homebuyer Reports make everything sound horrendous and are full of arse covering (especially wrt electrics, plumbing and gas). Still worth getting imho, but you just need to read between the lines.

Haha ross980, we got the Homebuyers Report done and it was just a load of arse covering!

What did you think of the windows?

If the survey came back as ‘Satisfactory’ or of reasonable value you may struggle.

The windows may be fine, the Surveyor may have noticed something about their construction that indicated they were over 10 years old (Like boilers, this seems to be a magic number for immediate replacement). Did the Surveyor say what was wrong with them.

Replacing windows isn’t particularly expensive if the rest of the house is fine. The main thing is the structure / size / location / floorplan. Most other things can be amended in time and quite easily.

The windows may even have another 5 plus years left in them anyway… but just highlighted on the report ?

well done for sticking with your gut feelings

To a certain extent you are choosing between smooth passage and lower cost.

If the seals have gone in the DG units then they are ‘spent’. If the frames are good then changing the DG unit is pretty easy and not too expensive.

It’s just the units that need replacing so we’re not too concerned, just was interested to see what the Hive thoughts were.

Solicitors are a PITA though…

Thanks again everyone.

That’s not to say you can’t use it as part of a re-negotiation though.