Compensation from seller and estate agent

[madcatladyforever]

I've spent the last 6 weeks purchasing a grade 2 listed house with the seller and the estate agent both trying to rush me into buying it asap.
Two weeks before completion I find out from my solicitor (who has spent weeks trying to get the seller to answer her questions) none of the work done on the building has listed building planning consent so I have to pull out of the sale because I don't want to be liable for many thousands of pounds of remedial work and an extension that has to come down.
I've spent more than £2000 on solicitors, surveys and so on and now face losing all that money.
Is there any possibility of getting that money back through a small claims court or similar because I know the seller and the estate agent colluded to hide salient facts from me, they are close friends.
Or do I just kiss goodbye to my money.

No.

It’s the system we have in this country, there’s nothing you can do. Ex EA.

Are you sure that it doesn’t actually have listed building consent.

We had this in a house we were selling.

Took a lot of unnecessary time to sort out to prove a wall was in place before they listed the building. Fortunately the estate agent we bought through had pictured the rooms with the wall in place on the brochure.

Pita otherwise no idea what we would have done.

FWIW I always wanted the wall down but as it was there when it was listed didn’t think we could do anything.

Saw a programme recently on a couple renovating a listed building.

The listed building people were adamant that the plastic guttering had to be replaced with cast iron.
Weren’t going to budge.

Turns out that the guttering was in place before the place was listed and they only had to replace like with like.

EAs don't get involved in the legalities around the title to the house or work done to it, etc - that's one of the reasons you have a solicitor to act for you. If you check the advertising materials for the house you will see they are caveated and any buyer is advised to make their own enquiries and satisfy themselves everything is in order.

I doubt the EA colluded - they are salespeople who want to push sales through so they get their commission.

Estate agents won’t get involved with listed building consents.
My husband is an architect and has dealt many times with people who have done work and then been caught and they want him to draw plans to remedy it etc. He stays well clear for a reason!
Unfortunately you won’t get any compensation from the seller. They will have to get the works sorted and properly certified which won’t be cheap and to be honest they could get a hefty fine depending on what specifically they’ve done.
Unfortunately it’s got to be one you chalk up in the life lessons area and if you go down the listed route again, be aware of needing this criteria before progressing.

I think you kiss your money goodbye, annoying though it is.

But.. My house is listed. Our local authority takes the view that they draw a line with new owners. So they wouldn’t ask you to change something the previous owners did. Worth checking what the policy in your area is. (Although they may do a ‘deal’ about stuff if you later apply for changes. So we had to change some pre-existing skylights as condition of knocking a wall down.)

That is interesting Gotanewname, I may well ring the planning depart and ask them what their stance is.
The only reason why I suspect the EA is involved in the deception is that he's an independent estate agent and he already told me that the seller is one of his dearest friends.
He must have know about the situation as he's also been very shirty in question avoidence and constant pressure on me to hurry things along.

Estate agents wouldn’t be obliged to know this in England.
Unless you can find a paper trail which suggests they knew you’d not have a leg to stand on.

I’ve not asked my friends what consents they had to do work on their house so them being best pals with the vendor may be a red herring

If you ring the council, tell them the property address and discuss lack of necessary permissions then you or anybody else will not be able to get an indemnity.

The EA should have declared a conflict of interests in that case.

Yes, ring the council. I had a similar situation and the council agreed- via my solicitor- to draw a line.

Mine was a roof terrace without listed buildings consent.

Estate agents are bastards. Ours told us a total lie about why the house we were buying had fallen through close to exchange. Then said the ex buyers were too upset to sell us the full survey they had had. She then said she could assure us categorically that the survey was all fine so it was not worth us getting one. You can guess the rest.

Our fault of course. We wanted to believe her as we wanted to save money by not getting a full structural survey. We were fools.