Sellers forcing us to buy without building regs

[Velvetpine]

DP and I (we have one DC) have been trying to buy a house for a few months. The sellers did an attic conversation with an office/bedroom and a bathroom in the loft. They didn’t get any drawings done at the time of converting, no building regs, and didn’t get the permitted development part signed off either - literally nothing. They’re trying to push us to accept indemnity insurance but it’s not clear whether our mortgage lender would accept this, and even so there could be potential safety and fire hazards if it wasn’t done properly. It was done 6 years ago. Our surveyor and solicitor suggest indemnity insurance wouldn’t be good enough.

The work from what we can see was done well so maybe it’s fine, but we don’t want to take the risk and we might also have problems selling ourselves down the line without retrospective permission being sought. I love the house so feeling gutted.

Has anyone else been in this position and what did you do?

Thanks everyone, really helpful to hear everyone say the same - I know the same in my mind and will follow the advice our solicitor and surveyor has given, I’m just trying to confirm to myself that I’m not being overly cautious and that everyone else would do the same.

They did initially start the process of trying to get retrospective building regs, but to do that they’d need detailed drawings and plans of how it was originally which they don’t have and none of the consulted architects/surveyors will apparently progress without this.

I’m trying to see how far we can get down the road with a potential indemnity policy, and if that fails, to go back to seller to say our major lender won’t even risk it so they will have the same issue with any other buyer with a mortgage. Of course if there isn’t a resolution with retrospective sign off then it won’t work out anyway, but trying to at least end up at strongest position possible.

The loft was done under permitted development I believe but there were no building regs signed off at all, not even started. I can’t understand why they didn’t

I just don’t understand why people do this. If you are going to undertake this sort of work, do it properly or not at all. The fact they haven’t followed the correct procedures would then make me question the quality of the job undertaken.

An indemnity is useless. As your surveyor has pointed out. The issue is the quality of the conversion. It may be fine, or it may not and require completely redoing at your expense. An indemnity doesn’t cover anything like that.

They either get retrospective building regs sign off or you progress without factoring in that you may need to rectify the entire matter yourself at whatever cost that may be. You might have to redo the entire thing.

In addition will your mortgage company lend on this? It may not even be your decision to make.

Just got to the end of a 2 year battle to get our building regs finally signed off (PITA builder walked away, new one had to fix it). We were told by Building Control people at the council that while it was not signed off our household insurance was not valid and in the event of fire etc, our insurers would not pay us a penny. Your sellers need to pay the fee and get the local council to come around and sort it out. You don’t buy until they have done it. No solicitor should advise you otherwise as you could end up with tens of thousands of pounds of remedial work to put it right to get the building regs sorted yourself - and any insurance policy would null and void, which makes it un-mortgagable.

Appreciate that you love it, but the seller has to call the council and get this done (their builder should have all the paperwork and make this happen very quickly if they have followed the rules). For example, if you have a loft conversion, you need firedoors off all habitable rooms off the escape route (usually the main staircase) and smoke detector/alarms in each of those rooms/on each landing. Have they done this? And do they have the fire-door certificates on your file? If not, building regs won’t be granted until they’ve been changed.

Hi OP, i’m pretty sure that indemnity insurance only covers you in that it protects you from legal issues arising from whatever you’re taking it out against. So in this case you would be protected from the council trying to take action for the lack of planning permission. It’s not a policy that you can claim on if anything happens to your house due to the potentially dodgy building works. Sorry if you already know that, i just thought I’d point it out incase you weren’t aware.

There are really really strict conditions to meet in order to be able to do a loft conversion under permitted development. The likelihood is that they needed planning permission. If they didn’t bother applying for it, I would really wonder about what other short cuts they took. Imagine if they used the wrong steels?! The whole attic could collapse onto whoever is sleeping underneath. We have renovated a lot of houses, and have always had structural calcs and building regs sign off done even for permitted development, it’s not worth the risk of doing it all on guesswork.

If I were you, I would walk away. And as others have said, if you have proof that the EA have mis advertised, you should be able to claim some money back towards your legal costs.

Pull out. Let somebody else take on 6his headache. No wonder the sellers are keen to push it through. Listen to your solicitor. That's what you're paying them for.

I’d walk away.

Just reiterating everyone else - walk away. I would be worried it wasn’t structurally sound.

Err what, prison sentence for not getting planning permission, are you having a laugh? In the extreme case they might tell you to knock it down/restore it to how it was before, at your expense, but a prison sentence you just made that up!

Planning permission may not be but building control sign off is legally required for loft conversions and cannot be circumnavigated

My neighbours bought a house with no regs but did have PP. after they bought it some issues surfaced and they had to do £20k of work to make it safe and move out for a couple of months. It looked immaculate when they bought it.

Then again we bought a house in same circumstances with indemnity and lived in it with no issues for 10 years then sold to someone who got indemnity insurance herself. She’s redoing the loft herself now anyway as part of a major rebuild so didn’t care.
Either withdraw. Tell them to sort the planning and regs if you can wait. Or knock off £40k! (If you can even get a mortgage in these circumstances and are willing to have the headache of it all)

What an odd title. No one is forcing you to buy.

Im a bit confused about the ‘forcing’ thing… what is it that they’re doing that is ‘forcing’ you? Are they being aggressive? Blackmailing you?

Because they probably knew it didn't meet the regs!

the sellers are not forcing you to buy it!! It's your choice to but it or not.

my advice would be to tell them they get ALL the documentation it needs or you're pulling out. Walk away & leave them to it. You'd be very stupid to buy it.

This is the biggest purchase of your life. Don't spend 100's of 1000's of £'s on a property with a huge illegal flaw. You wouldn't buy a car without a log book so don't buy this house.

I would definitely walk away, don't take on this headache.

Your solicitor has advised you to walk away, take their advice. If you buy this property without the necessary regs you are going to have a problem when you come to sell it. You might accept indemnity insurance but I would suggest that the majority of potential buyer will not. You could be buying an unsaleable house.

An indemnity is meaningless.

They can make an application to building control to regularise the works. I would not proceed until they have had it certified under this.

No one is forcing you to do anything. You either accept the risk and purchase or don’t and pull out. You could try and get someone to inspect the work to give reassurance but in reality there would be little they could see without putting holes all over the place so ots
down to you to make a decision.

Just read on a legal website that indemnity insurance becomes invalid as soon as someone makes an inquiry to the council about building regs on your property. Our mortgage provider was very fussy about these things - eg our house was underpinned 30 years ago and we had to take over the previous owners building insurance because no-one else would offer a new policy. It was an admin nightmare.

Retrospective planning is a nightmare too - they have to remove plaster work to inspect the beams/steels, check that the plasterboard is the correct standard (fire retardant etc) and that insulation is adequate) as well as inspect wiring. Even if this all passes, it then has to be repaired/re plastered/redecorated.

Honestly, the prudent thing is to walk away.

There was recently a man who got 6 weeks in jail for refusing to knock down some monstrosity that he failed to get permission for. It made national news.

Not getting planning permission in itself will not result in jail time. However ignoring the councils repeat requests can do although most people do not let it get that far.

I work for a national loft conversion company. Do NOT buy this house. The questions I would ask myself are:

1. Are you sure it conforms with the PD rights in your local area?
2. Are you sure PD rights were never removed from the home?
3. How can you be sure the structure is done properly without calcs? We have an in house engineer who does this and we fabricate our own steel to make sure it’s exactly correct. It’s very easy to mess up structure.
4. Without tearing out some plasterboard how will you be sure the correct U value insulation was installed?
5. Are you sure the staircase is correct? Spindles at appropriate widths etc.
6. Are the windows the correct height for fire safety?
7. Are there 30 minute fire doors throughout the property? What is the layout downstairs?
8. Will you ever be able to sell if you want to move?

It is a minefield. Even when you have experts sometimes it goes wrong. Only a cowboy would build a loft without calcs or building regs. Also, be aware a normalisation certificate costs upwards of £1200. The council inspectors will also need to access behind the walls to judge structure, insulation, etc…. Since the new regs have come in for BIs there is a shortage of them - many did not do the certification in time. Local authorities have warned the government this would happen and it has. So even if you were to go for a normalisation certificate you’d be waiting a long time.

Please pull out.

My advice would be - do not buy. Walk away.

If you don't want to do this, do not pay any more for it than the value it would have if the attic rooms didn't exist. It has been marketed fraudulently because those rooms are illegal.

The indemnity insurance, if you are foolish enough to rely on it, will only pay out enough to reconvert the rooms back into a storage attic and remove the staircase, if you are caught in possession of a nomcompliant building, but will only pay out if you do nothing to alert the authorities so the insurance will almost certainly find a way not to pay out if you are caught. It will almost certainly not pay for the conversion to be regularised to building regs compliance because it is almost certainly the case that the reason no BR signoff was sought originally is because the expense of achieving it was prohibitive or there physically wasn't the space to create a compliant staircase.

We had a much less serious situation in a previous house. The sellers had done a conversion that turned a downstairs bathroom into just a WC cloakroom and turned an upstairs bedroom into a bathroom. The downstairs WC wasn't BR compliant simply because it had no sink or openable window so it was easy to fix that. I didn't buy the useless indemnity policy but knocked off the costs of doing the work and getting the regularisation off our offer price. That worked fine.

You can't do the same as I would guess the cost of doing the work to gain legal regularisation probably exceeds the amount you have offered, or at least represents a big enough % of that to make a reasonable revised offer unacceptable to the seller, so you should just walk away.

Walk away and find a new place.

Cowboys. Do not buy. I would possibly accept no regs for low risk work, but nothing involving supporting structures.

We had this when buying some years ago. Perfect looking house. Bungalow converted to large house. Extensions everywhere, raised roof. Not a building reg in site and owner blatantly refusing to get it done. Interestingly, someone bought it for full price after we pulled out. Fools.