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It’s not yet a full twenty-four hours since we lost out on our most recent purchase plan.

I suppose the thing that’s stuck in my mind is not “oh shame we didn’t get the house”, but rather what must be going through the vendors minds. They were an older couple. Not Old old, but at the point in their lives where they’ve made a decision to move to an easier property to manage, all on a level and so on. They’ve been in the house 15+ years, and clearly liked it. Whilst there were things to be done structurally, things didn’t seem that bad. The decor wasn’t to our tastes, but we like it that way (better to replace everything when it needs it, than simply because you dislike the colour scheme chosen after too much Property Ladder).

So I’ve been picturing the scene as the vendor opened the door, full of hope, to the surveyor. I’m sure some trepidation must have crossed her mind as she led him up the stairs. She knew that the sale depended on a good report, but she was certain things were fine. The surveyor would have set to work inspecting the walls, forming opinions about the structure of the house. Our surveyor also forms opinions about the decor, and is dismissive in his comments about bathroom suites in particular not being “up to scratch”. We know this, but we don’t need your aesthetic opinions thank you very much.

The problems were manifold, and I’m sure he would have told the vendor some of the, er, highlights. Roof needs replacing (”so leaky you could hear it”), pointing problematic (”chipped out and not replaced”), the floorboards rotting (”I didn’t even need my screwdriver, my key went straight through”), and window frames all badly damaged. But the risk was the house itself was unstable due to the years of neglect and damp. If it had affected the joists and beams (which was implied as a real risk), the house is a real write-off for all but the most determined of builders. As these things were no doubt mentioned, the vendors dreams would have come crashing down. Mention rot, and buyers walk away. It’s a complex problem that affects the very fabric of a building, and it’s expensive to resolve.

So their dreams of buying a flat in the vicinity, possibly taking some money out of the property and taking themselves on a holiday, will have come crashing down. No £250,000 property this, but £170,000 at most , and probably lower given the amount of complex, expensive work necessary to get it up to scratch. Suddenly the professional couple won’t be interested, but builders will be required who will update the fabric and make the house both livable and sellable again. Builders focusing on “renovation” projects don’t spend big money, and less still on conversions. Property Ladder is a dream for most people, who walk into properties and think that a bit of bathroom revamping will add thousands on to the value.

But how many properties in that programme actually build value through merit of the work they have done? Most is through the rapid house price inflation that has been occurring (and still is, frustratingly, here in Glasgow). Back with “our” house, it’s structural work in an upper-conversion that just gets more complicated by the debate over who pays for such work: Bills would be split, and this brings in the risk of the neighbour refusing to pay their share (or worse still, disagreeing over the nature of the work necessary). The vendor is now faced with either trying to sell the property at a huge discount in the hope of getting some interest, doing the work themselves, or finding a naive buyer who doesn’t commission a full survey.

All of which leaves their dreams - ones I’m sure many of us think of - in tatters. Through our actions, and the expertise of our hired professional surveyor, we’ve spared ourselves a house of horror, but inflicted just that on the dreams of the vendor. I know we made the right decision: You of course have to be entirely and utterly selfish when buying a property. But I still feel for them, I really do, as we could have purchased that house and set them free to pursue their dreams. Instead, what we’ve done in brought them what is possibly their worst nightmare: The crashing sound of dreams, aspirations and hopes falling around them in pieces.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 27th, 2005 at 12:01 pm and is filed under Glasgow, House, Scotland, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.