Buying a house which will have solar panels removed, concerns about damage and cost.

Hi,

Very close to contract exchange now but have hit a potential hurdle. Solar panels...

So the situation is the seller owns the panels and wants to remove them to take with her. Now my concern is damage to the roof, and from what i've researched the roof is almost guaranteed to be damaged even potentially needing a renewal.

I've made my concerns known to our solicitor who has in turn requested evidence of the removal and proof of inspection to the seller's solicitors and also told us to get a roof inspection after they are removed and before we exchange contracts.

Just wondering if anyone else has dealt with this sort of thing and can advise anything else? i'm quite worried about the roof being damaged, what happens if it is? Could cost thousands and create huge problems with contract exchange.

Thanks for any help.

UPDATE. Thank you to everyone for giving so much amazing advice, the solar panels are staying on the property now ☺️

in HousingUKby FilmmakerFrankie

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DiscoBiscuit663

You’d be surprised what vendors will take with them, a friend bought a house recently and the vendor took all the carpets with her…

Pantomimehorse1981

Our sellers took the curtain rails ! Every room.

Keenbean234

To be fair I did this, but I did it out of petty revenge. Our buyers were awful from offer to completion, even our solicitor said they’d never seen behaviour like it. To top it all off on the day of exchange they dropped their offer and demanded we left all our furniture. We negotiated a smaller drop as I just wanted out at that point, and then I took every last thing I could. Curtains, curtain rails, toilet roll holder, shower curtain and rail etc, all but one lightbulb etc. Anything I’d not ticked on the forms. Petty as fuck but it made me happy.

LadyofFluff

I approve of this level of petty. What did they do to require it before their last request?

Keenbean234

At risk of doxxing myself because I’ve told some of these to people I know - here are some of the many, many requests that were all proceeded by a hissy fit when we said no.

for us to knock on all the flats in the building and ask specific questions about jobs/pets.
for us to wait around and provide a guided tour on completion day and show them how to use all appliances (we left instructions booklets)
for their surveyor to be allowed to make holes in walls/floors of communal areas (LH flat) even the surveyor apologised for that request
demanded we left certain items of furniture before later demanding we left it all
wanted us to cancel a holiday as “we should be in the country for exchange” even though finances etc all sorted.
wanted us to paint rooms in colours of their choosing in advance of completion complete with F&B paint chart and price lists.

We got a folder at the end which contained even more requests that our solicitor had just said no to after exchange. They were FTB who seemed to think they were doing us a massive favour buying a flat that had been on the market about 2 weeks. I did want to drop out at points because of them but we had a chain sorted.

LadyofFluff

... my flabber is gasted. The fuck!?!?!

I have no words. Well done for getting through it all.

Keenbean234

To make it worse we had the requests coming from left right and centre - the estate agent, the solicitor, and at one point they wrote us a letter as they obviously knew where we lived!

LadyofFluff

Did you hear from them after? They seem the type to email at 2am saying the tap is dripping and you need to fix it.

Keenbean234

No, they didn’t have contact details for us after we left, thank god. I have no idea if they tried through estate agent/solicitor as they never contacted us. I walk past often as we only live a few roads away but luckily they never met me in person so don’t know what I look like! I just think must be exhausting being like that.