How do i sell my house with a loft conversion & No building regulations?

[auntilin]

The conversion was completed by my ( builder) sbxh, some 5 yrs ago.
I knew there were no building regs. & so it is marketed & priced as a 2 bed.
I have a buyer who has had a survey, all ok, but it seems it is his solicitor who says he is not to buy the house without building regs.
I have spoken to the council dept ..Who will send me some forms to apply for building regs ? but this seems a waste of time & money,
I can't apply for retrospective/building regs, as it wouldn't pass, as in stairs too steep & no fire doors etc. not anything structural..
I feel like i'm in a catch 22 situation..
how do people sell , there must be others in this situation?

We've seen a few houses where the loft conversions have been done.

For them to count as a bedroom there's a minimum standard get height, access, Windows, ventilation etc.

Where that's not the case, it's called a loft room. Some have been brilliant. Others just fancy storage with a pull down ladder.

As long as you're not marketing it as a bedroom then you're fine. The mortgage company will only value the property the same as an normal not boarded loft.

loft conversions without planning permission

If you're not changing the external roofline you often don't need Planning Permission anyway - our loft extension has Velux windows not a dormer and we didn't need to go through planning. We did have to go through building regs though.

Op you don't need to find a cash buyer!
Friends of mine have just bought a house with 2 loft bedrooms with no building regs. It was marketed as a "boarded loft storage, with potential to easily convert to 2 bedrooms"

They knew what they were buying and are quite happy with it. They did only pay for a 3 bed house, and when they've completed the loft work they will have 5 bedrooms. They bought a bargain imo!

Stick to your price.
You have not misrepresented anything.
The house is perfectly saleable and mortgagable.
Do they want to buy it? If no, sell it to someone else.
We are moving next week. Our loft was boarded and lined and a couple of velux put in. I pointed out to purchasers that it was not a room. Height is too low to do anything with it without spending a fortune but good for storage or teen den. It was mentioned in the survey but that was batted straight back.

Another one here saying it doesn't sound like a problem at all.

The lack of building regs simply preclude it being marketed as a bedroom. As long as you're not passing it off as a bedroom, which you're not, how can the presence of a staircase make it any less safe than a loft room accessed by a ladder?

We marketed our house as a three bed rather than a four bed and the price reflected this. We paid an indemnity insurance (via our solicitor) for approx £40 during the sale process. If I hadn't advertised the loft as a room I would not be going down the road of getting planning permission at this stage.

When we were looking there were loads of houses advertised as "3 beds with useful loft storage" or similar, and I've never really known of it as a problem. The only issue I saw was lots of sellers still seemed to expect the same price as if it was a fully compliant loft extension, whereas I basically saw it as worthless (the work required to make it comply could be as expensive as starting from scratch). But I think building control still take a dim view on such things - their attitude is that if you put a permanent stair, walls, furniture etc up there then you have made it a habitable space and as such should comply with building regs. Arguing that it is an 'occasional room' or 'luxury storage' wouldn't cut it with them.

However, I doubt the council will have made any sort of a file note about the OP having a non-building regulation compliant house. If building control had been out to see it etc then maybe they would.

We could really do with a proper staircase to our loft. We keep all our camping gear up there (amongst other things) and hauling a 6 person tunnel tent up and down a metal folding loft ladder is not the safest thing I've ever done.

And no, in a titchy terraced house, with no garage and no room for dry storage in the back yard, there isn't anywhere else to keep the camping stuff.

Maybe if we didn't tell building control...