Unusual Estate Agent Request?

Clearlier

cpoh1 wrote: »

Two. One we missed after a cash buyer usurped us at the last minute. The other was sale agreed before falling through with major structural issues. Third time lucky.

Believe me if i had spent the €380 on the survey for the second house up front id have saved 3 months of wasted time and effort - its hours of time and stress looking to go sale agreed on a house. The cost of the survey is irrelevant in comparison.

It is but how did it take 3 months from viewing the house to receiving an engineers report?

In any case that's an argument in favour of the buyer ordering a report not one for the EA to require one.

Victor

Clearlier wrote: »

To bring it to slightly absurd levels if 100 people were interested enough in a house to consider making an offer then they'd all have to get engineers reports.

In such a situation, the same report can be sold to several bidders and potentially costs shared.

schemingbohemia

Victor wrote: »

In such a situation, the same report can be sold to several bidders and potentially costs shared.

Exactly, the OP should ask the EA to get all the bidders to pay for one engineer's report.

Clearlier

schemingbohemia wrote: »

Exactly, the OP should ask the EA to get all the bidders to pay for one engineer's report.

Soon somebody will think up the radical idea of having a system where independent engineers do reports paid for by the vendor!

Given the way that the current system works though the OP would be well advised to walk away IMO.

Either way I hope that the OP has gained some insight from this thread as to why a vendor might require an engineers report prior to considering an offer.

cpoh1

Clearlier wrote: »

It is but how did it take 3 months from viewing the house to receiving an engineers report?

Is this a serious question?

We spent close to 2 months chasing that house and bidding against others before going sale agreed. A week to get the engineer in to review the house, a week to get the report and a further two weeks getting costs from builders on the remediation before pulling out.

Would I have preferred to have spent €400 and saved all this time and more importantly heartache at the start, hell yes.

OP make sure you think carefully about this before you simply "walk away" as some have advised. If this house is a potential dream house that you think is well within budget then get the report done. It will give you an idea of remedy costs so you can bid accordingly. Or let you walk away before you get invested. Either way if you walk away you will always wonder!

Clearlier

cpoh1 wrote: »

Is this a serious question?

We spent close to 2 months chasing that house and bidding against before going sale agreed. A week to get the engineer in to review the house, a week to get the report and a further two weeks getting costs from builders on the remediation before pulling out.

Would I have preferred to have spent €400 and saved all this time and more importantly heartache at the start, hell yes.

OP make sure you think carefully about this before you simply "walk away" as some have advised. If this house is a potential dream house that you think is well within budget then get the report done. It will give you an idea of remedy costs so you can bid accordingly. Or let you walk away before you get invested. Either way if you walk away you will always wonder!

Of course it was a serious question. Perhaps I've been lucky but the longest that I have gone from making an offer to either pulling out or agreeing has been 10 days.

In any case however strong your argument for getting an engineers report prior to making an offer (and I think that it's a bad one) it's no reason for the vendor to require one.

cpoh1

Clearlier wrote: »

Of course it was a serious question. Perhaps I've been lucky but the longest that I have gone from making an offer to either pulling out or agreeing has been 10 days.

Congratulations, you have indeed been lucky, it is extremely rare close to unheard of for a house to go sale agreed after only 10 days on the market!

Clearlier wrote: »

In any case however strong your argument for getting an engineers report prior to making an offer (and I think that it's a bad one) it's no reason for the vendor to require one.

At the risk of repeating myself ad nauseum there is every reason for the vendor to require one. Crucially its a sellers market, they have a house that may likely require work and they want serious bidders only who know whats ahead of them. They have this luxury because as the OP said its in an area that will gather lots of interest and will have no problem selling. As a seller in a strong position I would not like to go sale agreed only for an engineers report to scare a couple off or have them come back looking for reductions putting you out of pocket and time.

All ive done is point out that it has benefits to the buyer too.

makeorbrake

Walk away!

miss no stars

Speaking as someone who does engineers reports on houses, if it's a fixer-upper it's a good idea to have a genuine feel for how much work is involved before you have a bid accepted and engage solicitors. Not entirely necessary, but I've seen plenty of heartbreak when people have already bought the house, have engaged the architect, gotten planning permission, have tender drawings done only to find out after the tenders come back that they actually cannot afford to do what they want to it because "oops, didn't realize underpinning was that expensive!".

While the concept of a vendor-provided report is nice in theory, it's ignoring the reality of the house in question. If a house is a fixer-upper we usually ask our client (who's bidding on the house or has gone sale agreed) what they intend to do to the house. They might give us a couple of options they're thinking of and we'll inspect the house - as is - and write our report in light of what they intend to do. For example, they might be flush with cash and may want to do a really high-spec sympathetic restoration of the house with a modern extension added on. So we might talk about the level of damage & deterioration to the sash windows or the fireplaces or the staircase or whatever and their potential for restoration and retention as an original feature. Anything that will ultimately need replacement will simply be stated to need replacement. A different person might not have as much cash but wants to buy in the area and their plans are to make it livable and treat it as a long-term project. Our report will reflect that and might talk about which issues need immediate attention, which can be put on the long finger and so on. We'll still highlight the condition of the windows and fireplaces, but the emphasis is different.

So for a standard property or a property with a glaringly obvious problem, a one-size-fits-all report might do, but once you're into the territory of restoration &/ renovation, you'll still need your own report conducted in light of your own plans.

Victor

Clearlier wrote: »

Soon somebody will think up the radical idea of having a system where independent engineers do reports paid for by the vendor!

That gets into all sorts of complication, as the purchaser would have no relationship with the engineer and the vendor may be making a warranty on the property that they don't want to make.

Clearlier

Victor wrote: »

That gets into all sorts of complication, as the purchaser would have no relationship with the engineer and the vendor may be making a warranty on the property that they don't want to make.

we covered this earlier in the thread.

Marcusm

Clearlier wrote: »

It's absolutely not standard practice and would be very bad practice on the part of the estate agent as anybody with any sense will walk away from such a requirement unless the house is of unique interest and even then they probably would.

To bring it to slightly absurd levels if 100 people were interested enough in a house to consider making an offer then they'd all have to get engineers reports.

You only survey a house after you've agreed a price for it. If the survey throws up something unexpected then the price can be re-negotiated or the sale lost. If the sale is lost the seller then has the opportunity to commission their own survey and reconsider how they present the house for sale.

By requiring that offers have been preceded by an engineers report the pool of potential buyers is greatly reduced. If I were selling my house I'd be getting rid of the estate agent who brought it up as an option.

Quite standard if it was at auction! If it was a wreck and a protected structure it might be a good idea of the estate agents to weed out well intentioned but uninformed bidders who might otherwise waste time.

Clearlier

Marcusm wrote: »

Quite standard if it was at auction! If it was a wreck and a protected structure it might be a good idea of the estate agents to weed out well intentioned but uninformed bidders who might otherwise waste time.

An auction is possibly the last place an EA/auctioneer would consider making such a requirement.

At an auction it doesn't matter a jot how well intentioned or informed the bidders are. If they win the auction then they have bought it and must pay for it.

makeorbrake

Clearlier wrote: »

An auction is possibly the last place an EA/auctioneer would consider making such a requirement.

At an auction it doesn't matter a jot how well intentioned or informed the bidders are. If they win the auction then they have bought it and must pay for it.

In which case, you should be getting some form of 'bargain' at auction to offset the cost of getting structural reports done each and every time a target property comes on the market. However, that doesn't seem to be the way things pan out in an irish auction context....

Dredd_J

When we sold our house it was clearly stated the the attic was an attic.
We had a stairs up to it and had it floored and walled so it looked like a room, nut it didnt have the height etc to be classed as a room.

We had several buyer bid on the house, then get engineers reports and come back complaining that the attic conversion didnt meet regs.
They had somehow missed the fact that it wasnt an attic conversion at all.
Then each of them tried to get money off on that basis.
There was a huge time wasting.
So then we got our own survey done, but nobody wanted to bid based on it since it wasnt their guy.
Eventually the EA suggested that we only accept bids from people with surveys done already.

We ended up with 4 serious bidders and things went smoothly from there on.