house for sale two estate agents

afkasurfjunkie

so here is a situation. newly built house for sale, on the market 4 years. price is dropped and guy goes to estate agent A, sees the house and is interested. estate agent comes back and says owner has made contact and that somebody else has just made an offer on it with estate agent B. guy can verify this as neighbours spotted EA B showing the house a few days previously and so can be pretty sure that the offer is genuine and not a phantom bidder.
thing is the house is built for a while, and needs a few things done, and would absolutely need a structural survey done before sale could go ahead.
my question is, who organises the structural survey? would you have to have your offer accepted before you could get survey done? could each bidder get it assessed seperately and decide themselves whether to go ahead or not? basically dont want to start bidding against somebody else for a house that may need lots of work done on it. or could you outbid somebody and then pull out if the property wasnt satisfactory?

StillWaters

Normally any offers are subject to survey. The survey is carried out once the offer has been accepted. The bank will require a valuation survey carried out by someone on their panel, but paid for by you. You organise the structural survey independently. If you know someone in the building trade, you could get then to come along on a 2nd viewing for a visual check and to give you some idea how much work is required.

afkasurfjunkie

ok, so play the bidding game...stop when we reach our set budget that we will not go over and if bid is accepted then get it all checked out.
thanks. will see how things pan out.