Building Regs

[BigWhiteRabbit]

I honestly thought we were nearly at the finish line! The house we are hoping to buy was refurbed by the current owners in 2018. They have done a lovely extension, knocked through the outside wall of the house for said extension and removed a couple of chimney stacks. It looks great. However, it has come to light today that they don't have building regs (despite us being told by the estate agents on several occasions that they do - i know....foolish us). I know that indemnity insurance is a way forward ( the vendors are also refusing to pay for that insurance) but I'm currently feeling WTF about it all. Why would you do so much work and not get building regs in? It has full planning permission. We had a full survey which didn't pick out any issues. Aghh, I'm just venting here really, I'm not sure what we will do. If we don't go ahead this will be the second house we have pulled out of having spent about £1000 already, and house hunting is exhausting when it's a three hour drive away. If anyone has any words of experience I'd love to hear them! Thanks

[bravotango]

Really horrid and stressful situation, I've been there. Although in our case the work had been done 16 years prior with no obvious problems so we went ahead with the indemnity insurance. Unfortunately 2018 is still quite recent so I personally wouldn't - would you be able to get a structural engineer in to have a look? Whatever you do, don't contact the council.

[PreggersMcPreggers]

Building regs is very particular. They maybe chose on purpose to not get it, because something they've done doesn't comply.

A house we owned had stairs lead into the kitchen. Which is a fire risk so we needed a sprinkler system, which was very expensive.

[superram]

I wouldn’t, why on earth didn’t they get them?

[BumbleNova]

You need to find out why they haven't got the certificate. If the work is compliant and they just haven't got round to it, it's an easy fix. If it's not compliant, I'd be insisting that it's remedied at their expense.

[user1487194234]

I would be very reluctant to proceed in these circumstances.

Certainly without more info.

[Flamingolingo]

Agree - it’s far too recent for an indemnity to really be an option, that’s for extensions that are e.g. 20 years old with no structural concerns and it’s too late to remedy it. In this case they need to sort the issue themselves at their expense. You may ultimately need to walk away, but it’s not that likely because this is a problem that will come up time and time again.

The agent probably isn’t at fault, they don’t usually see all that paperwork when marketing it, and the vendor will have just answered yes. It’s quite common for this issue with things like loft conversions where the property is marketed as a 4 bed but the 4th is in the loft with no sign off.

Push the vendor, don’t take this on without the sign off

[BigWhiteRabbit]

Thanks all for your time responding - I was just thinking we were going to have to pull out but I have since spoken to the estate agent who called me about the chancel indemnity and so i checked in with him. It seems it is our solicitor who hasn't got our file in order and is giving us misinformation (and he is a nightmare to get hold of). The estate agent says building regs for all works have been sent to our solicitor, so I hope this is the case and once that is confirmed it will be a major relief. Now i'm furious with the solicitor for being incompetent and a time waster!

[Bluntness100]

That’s incorrect, Indeminty insurance applies after twelve months from completion,. Op is your solicitor not advising?

[Flamingolingo]

It’s funny how threatening to pull out makes all sorts of paperwork appear though. We did the same a year ago over some ownership docs for the solar panels that we had been waiting weeks for. The vendors said they didn’t have them, we said finding the originals or sorting replacements was a condition of exchange, they came through the next day. Hang in there

[user1471528245]

Would agree with others posts, this is the vendors issues and it will affect every Person they try to sell to, so stand your ground and tell them they need to get building control sign off First, planning only covers the structural layout, building regs covers the work that’s been done, if something has not been done correctly they won’t sign off, if you purchase this house even with the indemnity you’ll end up in the same position they are when you come to sell and worse still could end up with some expensive rectification, which whilst covered by your insurance, could be very disruptive and time consuming

[user1487194234]

Indemnity insurance is not a direct replacement for Building regs(or anything else for that matter )