Anxious over renegotiation
We offered full asking price (£290k) on a 1930s property after our previous offers of 280k and 285k were rejected. It’s a great house and the first one to tick almost all our boxes and be in our budget, albeit at the top end of our budget. There has been nothing else that has come close to how we feel about this house, so unfortunately we are emotionally attached.
Both us and the seller have been very proactive with the sale (as far as I’m aware as we’re ftb). Our survey was delayed, however when it eventually returned it highlighted quite a few CAT 3s. Most of them we can do ourselves, but the survey said the original slate roof has come to end of it life and needs to be replaced. Also, there is no underlay so if a tile slips or breaks there’d be no barrier to water ingress, and in fact there is evidence of that already happening. I reached out to 6 roofers and only managed to get a quote from 1, who estimated it would cost between £14k-17k depending on materials. As we want to live in this house long term it looks like we will have to go with the higher quote to avoid shelling out on another roof in 30 years time..
I spoke to my mortgage advisor about renegotiating and they suggested that I start high and ask for a £15k reduction to address the roof and other smaller ticket CAT 3 items. I sent an email to the estate agent copying in what the surveyor said and the photos he took and the summary of CAT3s. However now I’m so so anxious that I asked for too much? Am I being too cheeky with my request or do I need to grow a back bone and get over it? The seller has been reasonable and I don’t want to take money from them, but we will really struggle to afford the new roof outright as well as fixing the other items and the general costs of moving in to a property combined.
As a seller would you be offended by your buyers asking for that much, or think it was reasonable? We do not want to pull out, but I’m terrified that the seller might walk away and then we lose all our fees and time, mortgage rate etc… we are also in a time crunch as we were served a s21 just before RRA came in