No building regs - and long crack

[NCHouseBuy]

Hi all - I'm buying a semi with an L shape open plan living, dining and kitchen. It is absoutely lovely, I'm at the last stages, have the mortgage, about to exchange 🥳...turns out it doesn't have building regs 🤦‍♀️ and I've now found a fine lateral crack running right across the middle of the opened living/diner. I've found more cracks in the bathroom ceiling upstairs - right above that running downstairs.

Help me - how bad is this? Is there any hope this is just the house settling (and therefore is it worth paying to get a structural engineet in to look at it)? Or is this - to those in the know - a lost cause?

Thanks everyone...argh🤦‍♀️

The two issues really are:

the cracks - these don’t really sound like and issue. We opened up a double doorway this year and there are a couple of fine hairline cracks in the plaster around the lintel. That’s just because we went from quite chilly to really hot very soon after it was plastered and it’s just shrinkage. (The change in material from brick to lintel also means that the thermal expansion rates within the wall itself vary.) When I can be bothered I will fill them in and repaint.

The BR - this is just not your problem. If you want the house you need to be prepared to wait for the vendor to solve this problem. It might take a few weeks, but now it’s been flagged they would be silly not to fix it if they want to sell the house. They also need to get in touch with their solicitor because it should have been picked up when they purchased the property and remedied before they bought it. Are you quite sure that it was never signed off? Is it that the paperwork is missing? We had this issue with a new build once and it was a case of sending off to the council for a copy of the certificate.

Make them fix this. You could find another house, they will struggle to sell theirs without sorting this issue.

@C4tastrophe

Foundations are irrelevant as you don't have a central point, the weight distributes out both ways from the padstones. Drilling small holes where the padstones should be will reveal if they exist and how large they are. Very difficult to drill into a padstone. The crack is most likely where they have skimmed the whole wall, and there is shrinkage where they made good the wall removal bit of the plastering. My (layman ex-builder) advice is the engineers can ascertain the integrity. I'd go with the drilling man, but also get him to pull up a couple of floorboards upstairs. Bear in mind, this is the vendors problem, not yours, they should be meeting the cost and getting the retrospective BR.

Whilst walls do spread the load out into the foundations, the load will not be the same. As much as anything, if there's less wall now than there used to be the load can't be spread over as wide an area. It's normally OK in typical domestic wall removals, as the foundation loads are normally pretty low anyway, but it still should be checked. (One of those things which gets frustrating for structural engineers is people think we're "just sizing a beam" but to do the job properly you should be following the design through. The beam design is the easy bit.)

Ime (admittedly limited) experience there are only two reasons to not have building regs.

One, because the owner does not realise they are required and so does not apply (although imho a good builder should flag this to the owner).

Two because the builder does not want their work reviewed.

Lack of building regs are only a problem if it results in issues for the house (eg it is not stable and requires remedial work) or at point of sale (when it will cause many people to walk away). Two pretty big issues.

The vendor needs to cough up the cash to sort properly.

Personally, unless this were a once in a life time house and the issue is fixable, I would walk away.

I've thought more about this. I was buying one house at £xxx but knowing there are no building regs on recent works... this is a completely different prospect. It's basically not the same house. I wouldn't even have viewed had I known, let alone offered.

Is there any point in asking for regularisation before exchange? Would this cover off any structrual issues, or is it a rubber stamp - and I'd still need a full structrual report?

You should call the council and email them.
They may say they will accept the structural survey and issue the certificate. They may want to look for themselves.
In any case, get the vendor on the hook for all/some of the costs.

I'm reluctant to contact the council myself as this will invalidate the indemnity policy and put the vendors in a more difficult position (of course they'll need to if the sale is to proceed but I'll leave that up to them to decide).

Well, seems you want the house, so get the structural report from the drilling guy. If it's fine, then you can be happy it's not going to fall down.
However be aware of possible outcomes required to obtain the BR, and discuss with that engineer. Off the top of my head, the worst case is the beam needs replacing, that's very unlikely and the engineer will confirm this. You may need to add more boxing to it for fire regs, you may need to add/replace the padstones, you may need to build piers to increase the size of the padstones / footprint (unlikely). The engineer would give his opinion on this.
Good luck!

We bought a house a few years ago which was done up by the owner in a company name to sell on. The form we received with all the property information said no major works/walls removed etc. That was a total lie and there were no building regs. There was no way we or our solicitor would accept an indemnity policy. It was an utter nightmare. Vendor was extremely resistant, EA should have been struck off (if there was such a thing in England). We got to the point where we really needed to see it through as no time to find another house so I pushed and pushed and pushed until they organised retrospective BR via the council. I'm not entirely sure what an indemnity policy does in reality but like many legal things you may have to be prepared to go to court to exercise so I would be extremely wary. The vendors solicitor should have picked it up when they bought or do they have an indemnity for it?

@TheTeenageYears
The problem is a solicitor cannot pick it up if the vendor doesn't admit changes being made unless it is obvious to you as the buyer. Even then, a friend has just sold a house after her mother died and the solicitor asked for building regs for the extension. Answer was they didn't have any...was built way before they were introduced!

An indemnity policy is absolutely fine and they're very common for lots of different things. Myself and others I know have them.
If the council discover the extension has no BR you'll be covered financially, (not sure how they would find out).
The concern for you really is whether it's safe/been done to a good enough standard. Have you rung the surveyor who has already been in the house to discuss as he might be able to offer more insight if you tell him there's no BR. If there are structural issues found the vendors can either sort them to sell the property to you or relist it.

@NCHouseBuy. "The cost of fighting the council to avoid doing work which may actually need to be done?"
I haven't read all posts, but kindly note, it is really not a matter of "fighting the council". Building Regulations are there to protect you.

The indemnity policy would cover only legal fees to challenge the council - not any building work I was forced to do (or needed to do for safety reasons). My buildings insurance would also likely not pay out if the work collapsed as it wasn't legally done to begin with. The indemnity policy actually still leaves the vast majority of the financial (and physical) risk with the buyer.

I've discovered it's worthless to the buyer - me.

The surveyor said we need building regs and the bare minimum required to ascertain structural safety is to open it up and look inside. If you're doing that, you might as well have the council present and regularise the regs at the same time, right?

Wauden

Exactly. So the indemnity policy covers you... to argue with the council against your own best interests, but not the cost of putting right? Waste of money I would have thought?

I honestly don't understand why you wouldn't pause the purchase and get the vendor to do all this. I'd be asking for them to pay for the structural investigation (with your choice of who carries out the work) and obtaining the proper BR paperwork before you proceed. If you are a guaranteed purchaser once everything is in place, it's in their best interests to do this - if you pull out they have to start again and there's every chance this situation will repeat. I don't think anyone should spend money on someone else's property. If it turns out there are real problems, you will have spent an additional £800 minimum and still have no house! It's up to the seller to put all this right first.

Sorry my comments re indemnities were more general. For most where the property had something done pre building regs etc they are the best and realistically the only option.
In your case given the changes are recent there's no excuse for no BR and I would push for the vendors to get them as they should of done when they purchased.

Have you established that the walls were load bearing? If they weren't load bearing then removing them wouldn't necessarily require BR sign off.

Yes, I've decided I'm not buying without retrospective building regs - which they would need to arrange. Unfortunately they've not responded and that's not a great sign.

Indemnity policies are not the answer in a situation like this
In fact in most situations they are very much second best
If you get one when you buy a house you could have problems when you sell

@NotDavidTennant

Have you established that the walls were load bearing? If they weren't load bearing then removing them wouldn't necessarily require BR sign off.

They are load bearing, unfortunately.

Correct decision OP

There’s a crack in our ceiling where we took a non supporting wall down. A surveyor confirmed no rsj needed and no reason but it always cracks whatever we do to it but we know it’s cosmetic so no issue. I must admit though I would still want a survey to confirm where the supporting wall is located in your case but a hairline crack is not the end of the world.

You’ve made the right decision as have people before you with regard to this property.
Indemnity policy is useless. This needs fully examining and full sign off. The vendor needs to sort all of this out prior to any sale. If not just walk away.

Worst case - you could have a worthless asset on your hands

If its worthless then it isnt an asset.

I bet that the vendors did the work themselves, thought that they would not tell Building Control, then the cracks started and they thought that you would sort it out for them free of charge.

CFs! You are well rid of them.
IAgreed, you have made the right decision,

I feel quite sorry for the vendors - they bought it off the person who did do the work themself. I think it wasn't picked up when these vendors bought, and this must be terribly stressful for them (I'll still need building regs for me, of course).