Well, we may have sold our French house. Fingers crossed. We have had the Diagnostic survey and the surveyor said there were a few issues with unearthed plugs and things like that. He said, however, that none of them were “obligatoire”, ie needing urgent attention. BUT, we have now had the completed report and it reads like a horror story!! We have been to our local electrical, plumbing enterprise (whom we have found excellent over the years) and they also seemed to think it was a horror story!!! They are coming to have a look for themselves and will do any work needed. There is also the fact that, as mentioned elsewhere here, we suddenly seem to have acquired 6 bedrooms instead of 5 and several additional rooms???
But my question is this. Can the potential buyers use this report as a bargaining tool to force us to drop the price still further? And if so, what should we do? I would be grateful for any advice on this.
Hi there Norah
We bought a house near Aix en Provence 5 years ago, and the electric diagnostic was also a 3 page horror story. However as we intended to totally renovate and rewire it wasn’t a problem for us. Any buyer can of course use the problems shown on a diagnostic to negotiate the price (down), so it could be a good idea to ask your local elec company to give you a ball-park figure for putting everything back the latest French standard. Then you can chose to either do the work yourself or leave it for the eventual buyer to do, but at least you have an idea of cost.
Regarding the number of rooms, the “notaire” should be able to help, or the Mairie (or local estate agent) for original estimation of local taxes based on number of rooms etc
Hope this helps
Phillip
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Hello Phillip
Thank you so much for your quick reply. We are taking your advice and having an estimate done this week. We did not even see the uncovered wires, they are so high up in a corner of the sous sol but we will ask for covers to be provided for them. We will do anything that may be considered dangerous and will go to the signing armed with our devis. Again, thank you so much.
cordialement
Norah (Baxter)