Negotiate house sale price for prospective building work?

[jks7492]

I've just had our survey back on a late Victorian mid-terrace house - first time buyer.
Nothing serious highlighted other than the roof - which as I expected has no roof membrane. Not really much discussion in the report other than stating that the roof should be stripped and a new membrane installed, despite the roof slates looking to be in decent condition and no other obvious defects.

I'm not convinced personally that there's much point stripping off an entire roof that looks to be performing fine and potentially has nothing wrong with it (especially until I've at least been able to see the condition of it myself in person) - Should I be trying to negotiate the cost of this off the sale price now or would i be wasting my time?

Has anyone had any experience with a similar situation negotiating a sale price to do some work that arguably doesn't need doing? Or equally had any nightmares and wish they'd re-roofed?

 

[jeds]

Missing membrane on a 100+ year old roof isn't a fault. All roofs back in them days were built either with no membrane or with sarking board. The purpose of the sarking board was to prevent wind uplift, which could strip a roof of tiles. Roofs in exposed areas were built with sarking, including most houses in Scotland. Of course, sarking isn't waterproof, but that wasn't the purpose of it. Back in the 60s, 70s, etc. it was common to see roofs stripped of tiles after a high wind. You don't tend to see that so much these days - the reason is roof membrane.

Most people think roof membrane was introduced to prevent water ingress - it wasn't, it was introduced to prevent wind uplift. Only afterwards did people begin to realise the benefit of it being a second line of defence against water. If your prospectiove house has not had its roof stripped for 100+ years, it is probably ok.