The survey came back red. What changes the price?

A condition rating 3 is the finding that carries its own deadline: get written quotations before you are legally committed. Government guidance then names three moves: ask the seller to pay, renegotiate, or withdraw. Proceeding at the agreed price is the fourth, and that one is ours. In England and Wales you can choose only up to exchange.

The deadline the rating names is legal commitment

The rating sets no date of its own; it borrows the one already sitting in your transaction. The published wording reads “Condition rating 3 Defects that are serious and/or need to be repaired, replaced or investigated urgently. Failure to do so could risk serious safety issues or severe long-term damage to your property. Written quotations for repairs should be obtained prior to legal commitment to purchase.” (RICS, Home Survey Level 2; the Level 3 description carries the same wording.)

That last sentence is the operative one. It asks for quotations rather than estimates, in writing, on that one defect, obtained before the moment you are bound. Government guidance defines exchange of contracts as “when contracts are exchanged between buyers and sellers. Legally binding and commits the parties to the property sale/purchase”, and describes the state you are in now as one where the seller has accepted “but they have yet to exchange, so it is not legally binding” (GOV.UK).

Statute is what makes that line absolute. A contract for land “can only be made in writing and only by incorporating all the terms which the parties have expressly agreed in one document or, where contracts are exchanged, in each” (Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989, s.2). Nothing said before that document exists binds either of you, so the window stays fully open until exchange closes it.

That section extends to England and Wales. Scotland runs on a different deadline and different vocabulary, and has its own section below. Northern Ireland sits outside this page: the statute above does not extend there, and no Northern Irish guidance was checked for this guide, so treat nothing here as covering it.

A rating 2 is the report telling you this is maintenance

A rating 2 is a job with no deadline on it, which is a different thing from a job you can ignore. The published wording defines it by what it is not: “Defects that need repairing or replacing but are not considered to be either serious or urgent. The property must be maintained in the normal way”, with a rating 1 meaning “No repair is currently needed” and the same maintenance sentence attached (RICS, as above).

Every rating belongs to one part of the house

Each rating is given to a single element, so a page of 3s is a page of separate problems. The ratings apply across the “building, garage and some outside elements” (RICS), and the report also weighs those findings against one another, because it “objectively describes the condition of the elements and provides an assessment of the relative importance of the defects/problems” (RICS). What RICS calls an element, this site calls a component: the roof covering, the electrical installation, the windows, each with its own lifespan and its own clock.

Two of your four moves need the seller to say yes

Withdrawing and proceeding on the terms you already have are yours alone; the other two are requests. The guidance names three of the four: “If any significant issues are uncovered by the survey you can ask the seller to pay for them to be fixed before you purchase; you can renegotiate your offer to take into account the cost of the work; or even withdraw your offer altogether” (GOV.UK). Asking the seller to pay for the repairs is a separate move from taking money off, and it sits at the front of that list. Proceeding at the agreed price is the fourth, and it is not something guidance needs to grant: we are adding it, not quoting it. It is the right answer whenever the findings are work you would have taken on anyway.

A request has three possible answers, not two. The seller can agree, refuse, or counter, and refusal is the outcome the list does not describe. A refusal does not put you straight onto the two that are yours: you can go back with the quotation attached, or ask for the exchange date to move so a missing quotation stops being the reason you are choosing blind. Those two routes come from us, and each is still a request that can come back no.

Renegotiating is explicitly permitted and explicitly conditioned: “A verbal offer can be renegotiated at any time up to exchange, but you should think carefully before renegotiating and only do so when a change is justified; for example if the home survey identifies significant issues” (GOV.UK). The same guidance names the cost of leaving it late, warning that attempts to renegotiate “when a sale nears completion may cause delays and could risk the sale falling through” (GOV.UK).

A survey is a report on the building, and anything further you want from a surveyor is a separate commercial arrangement: “Any extra service will require separate terms of engagement to be entered into with the surveyor” (RICS, Home Survey Level 3). Unless you commission that, the argument you take to the seller is one you build yourself, out of the quotations.

Which findings are ordinary for the age is our reading, not the report’s

Neither source tells you which findings are a house simply being its age. RICS classifies how serious a defect is and how urgent; government guidance says what you may do about it.

A building is a set of components that each age on their own clock. Condition does not fall in a straight line either: it holds roughly steady to about half the rated lifespan, declines faster through the next quarter, then drops off past 75 percent, which is the two-inflection curve. So a rating 3 on an element near the end of its rated life is a cost that was coming for you whatever the survey said, and a rating 3 on an element a third of the way through its life is a different conversation, because something has gone wrong early.

The one age-related line in the official material tells you to check your surveyor, not what to expect from the house: “Properties built before 1919 are constructed differently, so you must ensure that your surveyor is qualified to assess such buildings” (GOV.UK). No figure for how many findings an older house should produce appears in the rating definitions or the government guidance, so treat any count you have been quoted as a claim needing a source, and ask about each element instead of about the total.

What the surveyor did not look at is a finding too

The gaps in a report carry information, and the report has a code for them. “NI Elements not inspected” means the surveyor could not check something the inspection would normally cover, and where they are concerned about those parts, “the report tells you about any further investigations that are needed” (RICS). An NI is an absence of evidence rather than a clean bill, and on a rating 3 timetable it is the entry to chase first.

Several exclusions apply to every report at this level. External wall systems “are not inspected”, with further investigation recommended “before making a legal commitment to purchase” if the surveyor has concerns. No asbestos inspection is carried out. No enquiries are made “about contamination or other environmental dangers”, though a suspected problem should still trigger a recommendation. Where the surveyor “is unable to reach a conclusion with reasonable confidence, a recommendation for further investigation should be made” (RICS, all four). Those recommendations are the report’s live edges, and the report is blunt about whose risk it becomes: “If you decide not to act on the advice in the report, you do this at your own risk” (RICS).

A valuation and an EPC are not surveys

Two other documents get confused with this one, and neither assesses condition. Your lender’s valuation “is not a survey”, does not protect you if something goes wrong, and “may not even include a physical inspection of the property” (GOV.UK). An energy performance certificate assumes the elements it lists are “working correctly”, which is why it “does not indicate whether these elements are in good or bad condition” (GOV.UK).

Bethan has nineteen days and four entries to place

Bethan is buying an 1890s terrace and her Level 2 report lands with exchange nineteen days out. It carries a rating 3 on the electrical installation, a rating 3 on the roof covering, a rating 2 on the timber windows, and an NI on the roof void, which the surveyor could not access.

She works the list by what each entry instructs. The NI goes first, because it is the only item where nobody yet knows what is there, and the answer could move both rating 3s. The rating does not tell her how old the covering is, so she takes that from the seller’s paperwork, which is what the curve needs and the rating never carries. She calls both trades on day one, since a quotation needs a visit and a visit needs diary space, and nineteen days is not many once two trades are involved. The electrician takes a slot that week; the roofer has nothing free before exchange. The rating 2 on the windows she keeps out of the negotiation and onto the maintenance list with a date against it: raising it alongside the serious items weakens the serious items, and a job with no deadline still needs one she picked.

On day fifteen the surveyor has been back with the loft hatch open, the timbers are sound, and the electrical quotation is in. Before she goes to the seller she decides which of withdrawing and proceeding she would take. If the roof stays unpriced she proceeds and carries it, because on our reading a covering near the end of its rated life is a cost that was coming whatever the survey said, and the paperwork puts hers there. Withdrawing stays available and she is not using it. That decided, she asks for the exchange date to move so the roofer can get there, which is a request like any other and can come back no. Buying two weeks costs her less than pricing the roof by guess.

In Scotland the deadline comes earlier and the words are different

A checklist written for England will mistime you here. The contract concludes at the missives, and the guidance that describes that moment is written for the seller, so read the pronouns from the other side of the table: “a ‘concluding missive’ will be written. This is a binding contract between you and the buyer” (mygov.scot). You are the buyer in that sentence.

The report arrives earlier too. The Home Report single survey is “based on a visual inspection by a chartered surveyor” and tells you “about the home, its condition, its accessibility and any repairs you may need to carry out” (mygov.scot). Because it reaches you before you offer, the exit sits earlier: if you cannot cope with the repairs “you can walk away at this stage without penalty”, and if you can, “you should get estimates for how much they’ll cost before proceeding” (mygov.scot). The timing is the same discipline as the RICS instruction, one step further forward in the process. The document named is not the same one: RICS asks for quotations, the Scottish guidance for estimates. Asking the trade for a quotation anyway is our suggestion rather than anything either source addresses.

The categories are not the same either. Scottish repairs are marked “as urgent or needing future attention” (mygov.scot), which is not the 1 / 2 / 3 rating scale. Do not map one onto the other.

What to do this week

Chase what nobody has looked at before you chase what nobody has priced. The order below is written for an England and Wales purchase; if you are buying in Scotland the Home Report reaches you before you offer, the decision sits earlier, and the section above is the one to work from. Read the report twice: once for the ratings, once for every NI and further-investigation line. Then:

1. Go back to the surveyor first, in writing, and ask what access each NI needed and who can provide it. No trade can price a roof void nobody has opened, and what is found there can change what the priced items are worth.
2. Ask each trade for the scope and the price in writing. A figure given over the phone is an estimate, whatever it is called.
3. Leave the rating 2 items off the negotiation and onto a planned maintenance list with dates against them.
4. Decide which of withdrawing and proceeding you would take, and write it down, before you go to the seller.

Those entries are the first year of a maintenance schedule for a home you have not moved into yet. In appkeep you keep them in that shape: each component carries its own lifespan, a next date, and a place on the curve. If you are earlier in the process than Bethan, when to hire a building inspector covers what to ask for before the report exists.