How about this for a crazy idea. Move out of your current house and head off. Rent. Get tennants into your current house and have them pay the morgatage (and your rent if you can, depends on rent rates in your area).

I wonder if you could use this income to help support a future morgatage. Then you could have two houses. Though being a landlord can be a lot of work (depending on the condition of the house).

Anyway, probably not what you want to do (or maybe a good idea). Just a wacky idea.

I ran with that idea for long time. In fact it was Plan A. So keep London house (which is rising fast), rent it out and then rent where I'm going. The reason I didn't go through with it is that rental yields barely cover my mortgage payments (which are huge). This means that any time the house stands empty I have to cough up £1,000 a month.

The other problem is that I'm going to be 5 hours drive from London, so I cannot manage the property very easily. When it comes to selling it, I have to split the profits with my ex. All in all, its very risky and could bankrupt me.

Thinking aloud here, but the structural issue is very straightforward. My lendor will not lend against a house which has structural issues so I don't need to negotiate the price, instead the vendor is forced to get the work done or he'll never sell it. Presumably then, it has to have another structural survey and then vendor provide the builders' guarantees.

Sorry if I'm boring you all, but I need you guys to sound off with as I can't talk to anyone here because they don't know I'm leaving!

sometimes lendors will hold back some of the mortgage until you can do some work, this happened to me. We had to fix some damp problems within 1 year and they came round to inspect it. Then they released the rest of the mortgage. Its a pain cos you have to find the money for the mortgage and the money for the work, but we negotiated the price down to take this into account.
do you love the house?

The only concern is time. How long will it take to do all the repairs? Will the morgage people wait around if it will take 6 months (from report to complete fix)? Structural stuff may take a while to fix.

May as well get the seller to do the survey and go from there. Though I would pressure sooner rather than later. Then see where you stand. Get a quote on how long the repairs will take, and the cost (if there are any). Then you have to decide to take the risk and buy at reduced cost and you do the repairs or if the repairs wont take long get the seller to do them.

I wouldn't say I loved the house but there's nothing else in the area that's any good for the money.

I don't think the lender will give a loan until the structural issues are fixed, guaranteed and pass a structural survey. This at least protects me from unforeseen costs, but as you say, it's a time issue. Fortunately, the vendor has a problem, he has completed on his next house already and needs to sell this sharpish. His only other option is to rent the place out but of course he's sat on a ticking timebomb and if, for example, the house has movement then it's better he fixes the problem now before things get any worse.

So the vendor cannot escape from fixing the problems.