Misrepresentation TA6 form

[MGLaw24]

Misrepresentation/Building work not declared on a home we purchased - England

Sorry for the long post - basically we purchased a small/modest Victorian terrace house and the sellers did not fill in their TA6 form correctly. They said 'no' to questions about building work done on the house (and consequently, "no" to the next five questions about regulations, compliance etc). When we viewed the property, the seller's partner said he had done the kitchen himself and we accepted that - but otherwise no indication of work/DIY.

Since moving in, bathroom 1 started leaking immediately, and despite remedial fixes, continued to leak in multiple places. The seller left us a note on move in day talking about "knacks" and "quirks" in bathroom 2, but in reality, the plumbing was poor and pressure not suitable to be used practically. We renovated bath 2 as it had fewer problems and more easily fixable (thus cheaper). This includes the premature upgrade of an old boiler to handle the pressure. However towards the end of the renovation, we discover dated materials which show that bath 1 was a completely new addition to the house by the seller, lacked building control certificates, was unsafe (ventilation into a live chimney stack!!? Self installed electrics) and Bath 2 had also been DIY renovated. Further investigation on their social media posts (pictures of the house when they first bought it) show they have done even more structural work without telling building control or declaring it on the TA6, including: half an attic conversion, taking out doors and walls, alterations of sloped roof to flat, self made double glazing, insulating roof space. They also installed wood fire stoves themselves, without building control or HETAS, which actually is a fire hazard so we now cannot use them. Going back to Bath 1, this has been removed and revealed the leak has caused the floorboards to rot, possibly the joists too. We did know the attic wasn't fully certified - but we were told by our surveyor it only needed fire doors to bring it up to standard, not aware that the sellers had half completed insulation, heating and electrical work themselves incorrectly.

Essentially, every room of the house has been touched by their DIY, all of it uncertified, and in most cases, very unlikely to pass certification and will need serious remedial work (all evidenced in photos on their social media, documents and photos of the house from before their purchase, which wasn't available to us when we purchased).
There are plenty of other minor issues as well but this paragraph would be extremely long so I thought I'd post the most expensive issues to fix which are:

- costs already incurred to make bathroom 2 usable after failure of both bathrooms

- relocating and getting a new bathroom 1 fitted

- replacing self installed windows and doors

- checking the chimneys and getting them certified

- getting building control coming in and checking everything (they charge a fee)

- certifying the attic or at least bringing their work into compliance.

Had we known DIY building work was done and not certified, we would have made a much lower offer on the house, or not even bought it.

We sent an informal letter to their solicitor asking on any building works done, their solicitor replied saying 'we cannot talk to you' and then emailed our solicitor saying the sellers haven't responded to our 1st letter. We are now going to send a 2nd letter, a formal letter of claim, which sets out our cases against them.

The sellers bought a house outright (which is what they told me) and have no mortgage, and they received the money from our purchase of the house.

Any advice on what to do here? Did anyone else have a similar experience to me and managed to get it resolved? We are faced with family members who look negatively on our prospects to actually get money back!

(We bought this house with no mortgage in an affordable area in the Midlands, we had a survey done and none of these issues were mentioned. This seems like classic misrepresentation to me.)

You need to consult a solicitor that deals with property misrepresentation. They will be able to advise if you have a claim and help you to progress it. You haven't said how much money is involved in fixing the problems, but I'm assuming it is over £10k given your description.

Indeed I agree. We are talking figures between £20k or more so it's not a small claims court issue

Did your surveyor not see the problems?

Did your surveyor not see the problems?
I'm really surprised a survey would not have picked up on at least dome of these issues. Isn't the whole point of surveys?

Nope they actually missed quite a lot of stuff out so we will pursue them too. However, surveyors also can't physically inspect and knock stuff down either

I wonder if it might be possible to have a joint claim against the surveyor and the vendor?

Hmmm possibly, I feel like surveyors would use some loopholes etc. but we will definitely look into it

Well, you have a claim against both for the same 'incident' and if they were 'jointly and severally liable' then you can recover from both.

Also what did the survey say about the woodburners? It should at least have recommended checking for HETAS approval.

I have a similar problem, on a smaller scale. Mine is that I’ve discovered (after an electrical failure) that the vendors did some DIY electrical work which will
cost about £3k to fix. The issues in both my and your cases are:

Was work done which required building control sign-off or electrical certification, but those certificates were not obtained?

Was the work not declared during the sale process?

Does that amount to a misrepresentation?

Do you know, or can you obtain, the postal address of your vendors in order that you can serve proceedings on them? You will not be able to do this through their conveyancing solicitors unless they instruct those solicitors to accept service of proceedings.

Doing electrical work which requires certification without getting it certified is a criminal offence as well as giving rise to civil liability. On the building work side of things I’m not sure about the criminal bit but it certainly attracts a civil liability.

On a practical level, while their solicitors will probably pass on a letter of claim to the vendors, you cannot effect service of proceedings that way unless the solicitors are authorised by their client to accept service. So you will need to either find out their address, or get the court’s permission to effect service a different way (eg if you have an email address for them), or you can make what is called a Norwich Pharmacal application against either the estate agent or the solicitors to compel them to give you the address.

Before you send the LOC, you should separate out all of the defects into those which arise from work which should have been certified/signed-off, and those which are just shoddy DIY but not unlawful. Items in the second category are unlikely to be recoverable-for.

Then get quotes for rectifying the items in the first category.

In your case you probably also have a negligence claim against the surveyor, who would be expected to identify things like walls which have been knocked out, which would have enabled you to ask questions about when that work was done and who did it. The surveyor’s insurance will respond to such a claim and it is likely to be settled if you can identify things which a competent surveyor should have flagged to you in their report.

The claims against the vendors and surveyors are different. One is for misrepresentation and the other is in negligence. The facts to be proved are different. Their liabilities are different.

Ah I'm sorry to hear that. We have been receiving a lot of feedback to contact the surveyor so we shall do that. The sellers actually live in the same town and we know their address, so we have posted a letter of pre-action to them and their solicitors, in which they have 28 days to respond

I wish you luck for a sensible resolution. Litigation is protracted, expensive, and therefore when doing it on your own account, annoying (and I do it for a living!). If your claim is valued between £10k-£100k it will be within the Fixed Costs regime, which severely limits the amount of legal costs you can recover even if you win. Bear that in mind before you run up costs with solicitor. You can view the recoverable amounts here: www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/part45-fixed-costs/practice-direction-45-fixed-costs

I would hope that the vendor seeks advice which hopefully is to settle

Might it be worth getting a valuation based on what the property would have been worth if the TA6 had been completed correctly

Ie probably unsaleable or auction

Good luck with that. From my experience they’re likely to duck and dive around their T&Cs and will evade any responsibility for what any reasonable person would expect them to see / find.

A surveyor who has not identified internal walls removed and raised the question of when this was done and whether building control certs are available is negligent on any analysis and surveyors’ terms and conditions don’t defeat that. It’s literally the purpose of a survey.

Where they can be not liable is for things like gas safety and electrical safety where their standard report wording will suggest getting a gas engineer or electrician to survey the installations and confirm safety and legal compliance.

I would re-read the survey report carefully to see what has been said

Update:
We contacted the sellers and they have admitted to doing DIY for most things (plus replacing the fuse box!) we had assumed that were done. They admit to not understanding the form properly (not an excuse) and would like to proceed with a resolution without involving big solicitor fees. Will update soon.