Renegotiating or walking away
The lender talks about a retention for the roof and your survey rated that roof 2. Why are those two documents not the same decision?
They are not the same decision because a retention is the lender's step on its own valuation, and rating 2 is your survey's condition label on the roof. MoneyHelper is plain that a mortgage valuation is not a structural survey. The home survey has said something about the roof's condition. It has not set a retention, named a sum, or told the lender what to hold back. The lender's letter is not a second copy of the rating. Reading the two papers as one decision mixes a lending control with a condition comment.
Last reviewed 24 October 2026. Written for buyers in England and Wales unless this answer says otherwise. No named surveyor has signed this page. It is general guidance, not a report on your house, and not legal advice.
What is the fuller explanation?
A retention, where a lender uses one, is money the lender chooses not to release until work it cares about is done. The criteria for that choice sit with the lender. This note does not invent them, and the survey has not supplied them. Rating 2 on the roof is the surveyor's condition view of that covering or that element. It is not a valuation figure and it is not an instruction to the lender. The same roof can appear in both documents without the documents becoming the same job.
Ask the lender, or the broker, what the retention is for and what would release it. Keep that answer with the mortgage offer. Ask the surveyor, if you need it, to point to the roof sentence that carries rating 2, and get a quotation for that sentence alone. Do not subtract a retention from the survey or paste the rating into the offer. MoneyHelper's distinction stays: the valuation is not the structural survey.
What should you ask your surveyor?
- Which part of the roof carries rating 2 in your report?
- Did you set, or even mention, a lender retention?
- Is the rating a condition comment rather than a valuation of the roof?
What are the typical next steps?
- Keep the lender's retention letter separate from the survey rating.
- Ask the lender what the retention requires before it is released.
- Quote the roof work the survey actually described.
Costs vary with the building and with who you instruct. Where this page does not cite a published figure, ask the surveyor, a relevant specialist, or your solicitor for a written quote. Do not treat a forum average as the price.
Also asked about this
Can you treat the retention sum as the cost of the rating 2 roof?
No. The survey has not priced the roof, and this note will not invent a figure. A retention is the lender's own control on the valuation it instructed. MoneyHelper treats that valuation as not a structural survey. The rating remains a condition label, not a bill for the covering.
If you are a cash buyer with no lender, does rating 2 disappear?
No. The rating is about the roof, not about whether a lender is in the purchase. With no lender there is no retention to argue about, but the condition comment remains. MoneyHelper's point is the distinction between products. It is not a rule that only mortgaged buyers have roofs.