Contracts & Valuation Report

[mgronholm]

Hi All
My girlfriend is just in the process of buying a second hand apartment and it is now nearing the contract signing stage. The contracts have been drafted and issued to her solicitor. I felt that the contracts were drafted very quickly before a surveyor had been to inspect the property. She has now had a surveyor conduct an audit on the property and he has noted a slight defect in the structure (Settlement crack along the stairs, nothing major) The surveyor has stated the cost to repair this would be in the region of €1500. She called her solicitor and informed her of this and asked if a request for a price change could be sought to reflect is work on the property. Her solicitor has dismissed this out of hand!!
My questions are:
1 - Is it a case of the house being "sold as seen" regardless of surveyors report??
2 - Should the surveyor have conducted the audit before the contracts were drawn up and sent to her solicitior??

Thank you all in advance

Regards
Noel

 

[Vanilla]

If she hasn't yet signed contracts, or signed contracts subject to survey, then of course she is entitled to try to renegotiate based on the results of the survey. However it is not necessarily her solicitors job to do this- she can very easily do it herself- get on to the auctioneer, tell him the result and ask him to ask the vendors to reduce the price to reflect the survey report. Changing the price on the contract is a matter of getting a biro out....if agreement is reached beforehand.