Not sure what to do - repair on flat close to completion

[JackieBrambles]

We are due to complete on our sale and purchase this friday (yay!). We exchanged 2 weeks ago.

The place we are selling is a victorian conversion flat (top floor). On Sat morning our downstairs neighbour said that a leak was coming through her bathroom ceiling.

We realised it was our bathroom radiator leaking so called out a plumber straight away who replaced the valve where the leak was (£160 paid).

Our neighbour says water has stopped coming through now but that she can still hear a drip so is worried a pipe is leaking. I haven't gone down to hear the drip for myself as yet.

We are just a bit unsure of what to do now. I imagine any further investigation work is going to involve taking up the tiled bathroom floor which of course will be messy/might wreck it for the new owners.

Should i just talk to the agent and explain? or the solicitors?

We don't mind paying for a fix of course but the timing is terrible, I'm not sure we could even get someone to come and look/sort it out pre Friday because we both work full time and can't take time off easily to wait in for someone. Although my neighbour has our keys so she might be able to let someone in.

I'm just worried about making decisions on a place that won't be ours in 4 days!

Argh!!

Your buyer legally has to take out building insurance upon your property upon exchange so they should be able to claim under that for repairs if needed later on. I would speak to your solicitor to check the position. However you should still do your best to prevent the leak I would have thought?

you definitely need to be honest, as otherwise they may claim against you later on (though they could settle on just taking a payment informally if you in direct contact). I think you need to discuss with the buyers, what do they want you to do?

Thanks for the replies. I called the agent to tell the buyers so they are informed.

Had the neighbour's plumber around today and he's not sure where the leak is coming from but thinks it's easier to investigate from the downstairs flat (she needs her ceiling redecorated now anyway!) rather than ripping up our tiled floor.

So he's going to do that tomorrow and hopefully he'll be able to fix it. Good news no damage to our flat but bad news in terms of what it will cost.

Need to discuss with neighbour re claiming on the buildings insurance. Not sure what the excess is or how long they would take to pay out. Hmmmm

usually the person who caused the flood pays, in my experience while living in London at least. If you/they claim on insurance the premium gets raised as opposed to 'no claims'. Or the neighbour who flooded needs to claim on their insurance. I even vaguely remember that they have to claim - and therefore usually aer happy to just offer money if it's not anything major, but can't be absolutely sure.

I meant in the first sentence that person who caused the problem pays cash for redecor/plumber, after the flooded party gives them the quotes. They prefer this to using their insurance.

That makes sense re paying out rather than claiming.

There is an excess on the policy of £250 for water leaks! Will need to see what our neighbour prefers to do.

We are happy to pay out, but if it's over £250 then we might have to insist that a claim is made!

I'm just not sure who should/can claim - you or the flooded neighbours. In a way not fair on them to then have their premium raised due to a claim.
I'm interested to hear if someone can clarify this too!

Well it's the same buildings insurance policy as it's the same building (2 flats we are top) so I guess it doesn't matter who claims really, although the policy will be in the buyers name on completion rather than ours.

Not sure no claims is too much of an issue as the premium is huge due to the building being underpinned for subsidence 10 years ago!

Sorry meant to clarify that our flat and the downstairs flat share the premium.

I'm not sure building insurance covers inside of the flats (if not anything structural). Don't you have insurance on your own flat? that's normal, includes contents but also damage like fire/leaks inside the flat but not affectiong the whole building)? Isuppose if it's only two flats there, maybe your build insurance covers everything butI haven't come across this as I always lived in buiiding of four flats or more.

buildings

Yeah we have contents insurance for our flat but this leak is covered by our buildings insurance policy. Not sure if that's unusual!

My neighbour has started the claim today - we are going to pay the £250 excess. She's happy to claim so that's good.

I told the EA yesterday morning to tell the buyers, they only came back today to say it needs to go through solicitors! So I've now told them. Luckily there is no damage to our flat or cost to the buyers so hopefully it will all be ok!