Negotiations after inspection?

[myshel]

The buyer of our home had his inspection of the property today and has come back with a list of demands. I'm trying to decide which ones are worth fixing and which to say "no" to straight away.

A little background first, however. We decided to work with the buyer on a few things that he seemed edgy about (a one year home warranty was one), and we also decided to be VERY flexible about the closing date. The buyer had a locked in rate for his home loan that was to run out the 28th of this month. We're closing on the 27th so he can get his rate. This is a hardship to us however as I'm currently 38 weeks pg. I'm due in two weeks; we're moving into our new home in two weeks to accomodate the buyer of our home.

Because it's snowing here today (yes, it's snowing in Iowa in April! WTH?!), the inspector and home buyer couldn't look at the roof and are coming back again. We know that the buyer will want to negotiate over the roof a bit because we've had a leak previously, but it was repaired.

So, here's his list of "want it fixed" items. Which should we do (again considering that we're moving in two weeks and I'm massively pg right now) and which do we say no to?

* wants a handrail installed from landing by backdoor to basement (DH could probably do this, but doesn't really want to because he's responsible for packing everything we own and moving it all to our new house)

* wants an extremely old basement toilet repaired (we had a plumber come look at it; he said that the toilet needs replaced and cannot be repaired)

* wants boards along one side of a carport base replaced (there is some wear and tear there from our dog and from some standing water; DH replaced two sides of the garage two summer ago, but these boards were rotten. The ones on the carport are not)

One item he wanted repaired was a very small gas leak in the basement to the water heater. We did have a plumber come out and repair that item today.

Also, we've had estimates done on the roof ranging from $2600 to $3000. Knowing that this will come up in a few days, how much would you give the home buyer toward a new roof if the roof has been recently repaired and is currently not leaking (and hasn't done so for 5 months)?

TIA!

[villanelle75]

If the roof isn't elaking, what needs to be done? Is that the estimate for a new roof?

Ultimately, all of this comes down to how much you need to have this sale go through. Mixed in with that is also how much you think this buy needs for the deal to go through. Given his rate lock situation, I'd say you probably don't have to be overly accomidating, but at some point, your refusals could be deal-breakers.

Since you are pregnant and probably not wanting hassles right now, if you can afford it, consider waiting for the roofing estimate and the just offering a blanket amount for him to fix all the things himself. It doesnt' ahev to cover the cost of all the things on the list. If there is acutally a probelm with the roof, other than being old, I would set an amount that covers a lowest of 3 estiamtes on the roof, plus a few hundred dollars more to cover some of the other items.

You might be able to get away with less, however, especially if the roof doens't have any real issues. Since he is in a hurry to close, he might take what he can get.

What does your agent suggest you offer?

[TazLuv]

I would say no to the railing - that is a personal preference, you guys obviously didn't need one, if he wants one he can install it.

The other items sound like things your agent should have taken into consideration when pricing the house. If so, they should already by taken into account with the price. I think if you want to give him $X off of the sales price that is what I would do. Why should you have to pay for things at this point?

I would also say since he is so pushy to close fast he will probably back off on most of these things - none of them (except maybe the roof) hurt the integrity of the home IMO.

[myshel]

Our agent told us that all of the contingencies of the sale have been dropped, and it's a matter of negotiating the items found in the inspection. She hasn't really said much about what she thinks we should and shouldn't do.

The issue with the roof is that when it was was done initially (about 10 years ago), it wasn't done as well as it could have been. When we bought the house three years ago, our inspector told us that the roof didn't have a real amount of longevity to it. Our plan, had we decided to stay in the house longer, was to replace to the roof. That's why we got the estimates in the first place.

I guess I'm questioning the need to do some of these little things when we've already done so much to assuage the buyer in the first place. I mean, the man is purchasing a 90 year-old $100,000 home after all. I could definitely see having greater issues with some of the items if the house were newer and in a different price range. Am I being unreasonable about that? When we had the inspection on our new property, there were a list of things the inspector found, but we only insisted on having an electrical circuit breaker/fire hazard issue fixed. We sort of considered the other items as things we'd need to deal with as part of owning a home.

Maybe because we didn't really do much negotiating about ticky-tacky things when we bought our current house or our new house, I'm assuming that other people would be like too.

How much would you let finances dictate your decision to repair some of these things?

ETA: I like the idea of offering the buyer an amount of money and saying, please fix these things yourself. I'm also not opposed to giving the buyer the lowest amount on the roof replacement. I'm not sure how much I can convince DH of these things though. He's the "banker," so to speak, and is all about the bottom line. He's already feeling the heat from giving into the buyer's request for a home warranty and basically all of his closing costs.