No certificate of completion on 10 year old flat

[siennamey]

Flat we're buying has no certificate of completion from building control. It's just over 10 years old and has been sold twice already since it was built.

Solicitor has spoken to local authority and they have confirmed that they do not hold any building control certificates for the development of the property due to the age of the property and the fact that they did not issue certificates at this time.

Is this going to make it really difficult to sell further down the line? NHBC have confirmed the warranty that was on the plot before it expired was only a warranty and did not cover a compliance check.

That's very odd, and the NHBC want their arse kicking if it's true, because one of their own criteria for signing off the warranty is that the B.Regs compliance checks have also been signed off.

The NHBC do both Building Control and Warranty checks on any development that is warranty registered with them (I've never know a site that has been NHBC for warranty, but Local Authority or Approved Inspector for Building Control, and I'm not even sure that the NHBC would accept such an arrangement), and their systems are all computerised and very well joined up, in my experience - any issue flagged by the BC inspector is automatically transmitted to the Warranty Inspector, and vice-versa.

It is also a CML (Council of Mortgage Lenders) criteria that the B.Regs must have been signed off before they will release mortgage monies, so if the flat genuinely had no B.Regs completion certificate, it would have had to have been bought without a mortgage by its original purchaser... and then the subsequent two purchaser's solicitors should have also flagged up the issue.

Unless it's Local Authority Building Control, it's perfectly normal for them not to hold the completion certificate, though. The system is that the NHBC (or other approved inspection body) notifies the Local Authority when the application is submitted to them that they, not the Local Authority, are dealing with the building control. The Local Authority has a fixed period in which they can object (but they never do), after which the whole process is dealt with by the NHBC (or whoever)... the Local Authority has no further involvement.

Thanks!

I rang up NHBC after reading this. They've said that when they issue a warranty, if the building control checks aren't done by them then they instead issue the warranty based purely on their own guidelines. They don't necessarily need to see the completion certificate if the checks have been done by the local authority or an idependent body. Thinking about it now, I imagine the guidelines they use for warranty may be the same as what they would use for their own building control checks, but this is just speculation.

I spoke to the vendor and they said that they got a mortgage out on the property when they bought it - it was repossessed from an agency who bought a bunch of flats in the development and then they went bust so suddenlt there were lots of properties were in sale in the development at the same time. The vendor's friend lives in the flat below and also got a mortgage on it.

I guess the best thing would be to go to a few lenders and explain the situation with the caveats and ask what they think before they run full credit checks?

Solicitors have now contacted local authority so an indemnity might not be a possibility. Aarghh.

Broker is your first stop for the "is it mortgageable" issue. Should be able to advise and saves you calling multiple banks.

As for the rest of it seems like you have some good and advice and way over my head... good luck!

" They've said that when they issue a warranty, if the building control checks aren't done by them then they instead issue the warranty based purely on their own guidelines."

It is incredibly rare (read: unprecedented, in my 35 years in the industry) to find a warranty by the NHBC where they didn't also undertake the building control. It just wouldn't make any sense. The exception is in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where different systems apply and the NHBC are not allowed to take on the Building Control function.

There is a single application form (known as a SNIN - Site Notification and Initial Notice) to the NHBC that covers both building control and warranty registration. The 'site notification' is the NHBC warranty part and the 'initial notice' is the formal notice that the NHBC is instructed to tell the Local Authority that they, not the Local Authority, will be handling the building control... the whole NHBC system is therefore joined at the hip, so to speak.

It does have a separate tick-box to say whether you want them to undertake building control or not, but I've never known anyone who would use them for warranty but not BC, and once you've filled in that form, the rest of the process is entirely seamless between the two sides, so far as the developer/builder is concerned.

I don't know how far you'd get, but you might try asking the NHBC to provide a copy of the SNIN for the site, which might give additional clues.

If you are 100% certain that neither the NHBC nor the Local Authority handled the building control, then unless you can establish who did deal with it, don't walk away - run.

"Thinking about it now, I imagine the guidelines they use for warranty may be the same as what they would use for their own building control checks, but this is just speculation."

Oh.. and yes, they are.

There is a single document called the NHBC Standards, which covers every aspect of construction and is used by both their warranty and building control teams. It is actually a more comprehensive and demanding standard than basic Building Regulations so in theory, if the warranty requirements have been satisfied by adherence to the NHBC Standards, then the work should comply with Building Regulations and then some. But without the necessary certification, I'd still run away!

Thanks! I just don't know how important this stuff is after the building has been standing for 10 years already.

The council may have done the building control but don't keep it on record for more than 10 years. It's only just over 10 years old at this point so I've just missed that deadline.

The vendor apparently got a mortgage fine when he bought, though it was a repossession from a company who went bust after they bought a few properties on the development, so he's unable to get in touch with the original owner who bought the flat as a complete new build.

"The council may have done the building control but don't keep it on record for more than 10 years. It's only just over 10 years old at this point so I've just missed that deadline. "

It might be worth having another go at the council, in that case. I worked for Building Control for Leeds City Council for a brief while, and one of the tasks they gave me was to go sort out the file storage in one of our buildings, because the space was needed for something else. There were files going back to before World War One! I eventually offloaded a lot of it to the local historical society.

My point being that it's unlikely that someone goes in on a weekly basis to weed out all the newly expired files...

Common sense suggests that after 10 years, proof of Building Regulations approval isn't important at all, but the story you've told about the flats being bought out of bankruptcy worries me... I'd want to know that the construction work had been finished to an adequate standard in the first place, and that there are no latent defects waiting to bite.