Did not know it was BISF, how to proceed?
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Hello All,
I’m after some advice and hope you’ll be able to help. We had our offer (asking price) accepted on a house in December. We are still awaiting mortgage offer from lenders etc but have paid for searches and survey.
However, we had a (personal) building survey done and it’s come back that the house is a modernised BISF this has come as shock to us as we were not told by both vendor and estate agent.
We are really indecisive on what to do next, we still like the house but think if we had know it was BISF we would have gone in with a lower offer (from my readings so far it looks like BISF should be a bargain, this house is not) plus the survey says we need to do some repairs nothing major though.
We are thinking of asking for a reduction in the price but want to wait for the lender to do a valuation so we can negotiate based on that.
Is it really right to think BISF house should be cheaper? Will we be able to resell in the future? What will you do?
Sorry for the long post and thanks.
Hello Kemz
I would like to check that the house your looking at is indeed of BISF construction as they are pretty easy to differentiate unless the house was externally clad in a different material.
Can you provide the street name for us or send it to me via P2P Mail at the top of the home page?
Hi and welcome. Most estate agents know little to nothing about non-traditional construction, so he or she probably wouldn’t have known it was a BISF house. When we bought this house the estate agent knew nothing about its construction and I identified it on the internet through a quick Google search.
Given that the Building Research Establishment (BRE) in their studies of potentially faulty building systems in the 1980s found that BISF construction should have an expected life equivalent to a traditionally-built house of the same age, and that all the major high-street lenders will lend on this basis, it is perhaps unfair to expect the sellers to heavily discount their home.
On the other hand, many people are woefully misinformed about BISF construction, typically confusing it with a temporary prefab, defective precast-reinforced concrete construction etc and so some will be unnecessarily wary.
I would check on Zoopla or something like that what similar BISF houses have sold for in the area. I can only speak for Bath but they tend to sell fairly quickly round here, but there are few comparable traditionally-built houses in town.
Ed
Thank you Ed