Can estate agent tell us this?

[MyUsername3210]

Age of boiler and what land is ours (eg. do we own the strip of land in front of our front door?) - are these things the estate agent can tell you before you progress further or is this something for solicitors/survey?

I am a First Time Buyer and our estate agents haven't been clear on lots of things so far so I just want to understand what information they should be able to give me before I secure things and start paying fees, or what information can only be declared once things are further down the line

thanks

Regarding the boiler, yes the estate agent should be able to ask the vendor for you. When we bought our vendor had to produce via their solicitor a boiler certificate to show it had been serviced recently and was safe.

The strip of land, the estate agent could make enquiries about, but you will get documents, usually the first bundle of paperwork you receive, from the Land Registry showing what land is included with the purchase. Good luck!

You can ask,

I would definitely be asking about the property boundaries.

The boilers age is a bit of a meh. I would be more concerned on what type of boiler it is than the age.

They need replacing once every ten years, so say its a new one only couple of years old, by the time you sell again it may be nearing replacement. Will you replace it before its needed, probably not and the next buyers will only have a short life and have to replace.

I hope you can see what I mean. Someone somewhere will have to replace a boiler. The question is what type of boiler system is it and will it be expensive to replace.

@LemonSwan

You can ask,

I would definitely be asking about the property boundaries.

The boilers age is a bit of a meh. I would be more concerned on what type of boiler it is than the age.

They need replacing once every ten years, so say its a new one only couple of years old, by the time you sell again it may be nearing replacement. Will you replace it before its needed, probably not and the next buyers will only have a short life and have to replace.

I hope you can see what I mean. Someone somewhere will have to replace a boiler. The question is what type of boiler system is it and will it be expensive to replace.

I completely agree about boiler age. In our last house the boiler was only a few years old and caused us no end of trouble. We ending up replacing it after a year or so as we were so sick of having problems. When we bought out current house it had the original boiler which was about 15 years old at that point. We fully expected to have to replace it very quickly but when we had people out to quite they told us we would be mad to and described it as bullet proof! 3 years old we still have it and haven't had any problems and our bills are lower than previous house despite it being much bigger! You are spending thousands pma property try not to get too focused on something like a boiler. If it's not a short term property then it is fairly likely you will need to spend money on various things like a new boiler

You can ask the agent or the vendor but it's better to ask the solicitor / surveyor on boundary matters , the vendor may know the boundary line but the legality of the boundary will be in the printed deeds from searches your solicitor will get ,
you can ask for details on the boiler , most importantly how often it's been serviced and records on service history , this again will come as part of the information requested by your solicitor from the vendor , who should have documented proof of services

Wouldn't get to hung up on the age of the boiler - make yes, age no. Mine (Vaillant) was installed in 1989.

You can get the boundary info from the Land Registry for £3. Well worth it. It's not exact, but it'll give you an idea of what's yours and what's your neighbours'.

I agree about the boiler comments. I would still ask the estate agent as it's useful to know and so you can budget, but it's not something you'd knock money off the price of the house for. Unless maybe you need a whole new system.

Thanks every one really do appreciate all the tips!

The seller told us we own the strip of land in front of our door but we downloaded the land registry documentss and it doesn't look like we do. So we weren't sure whether to query this now with estate agent or wait? It's not crucial that we own it but it would make a positive difference if we did so we'd like to know

@tanguero

Wouldn't get to hung up on the age of the boiler - make yes, age no. Mine (Vaillant) was installed in 1989.

The same- 1992 and just had an engineer out quote for replacement and he said its fine.

The strip could have been registered separately to the property. You could look up your neighbour's documents also to see if its on there if you can't find a record for the land separately.

Thanks all and thank you @impatientwatcher we'll have a look at their docs

One other question I had. On the online listing it was listed as having outside storage space. On another viewing (after our offer was accepted) we asked to see this as we hadn't previously and the vendor gave us a puzzled look and told us there is no such thing.

Again not a deal breaker but we are a bit frustrated. Can we bring this up with the estate agent?

Estate agents are generally clueless. I wouldn't worry about errors in the listing unless they are deal breakers for you.

solicitor about land in front of property or check Land Registry site

@MyUsername3210

Thanks all and thank you *@impatientwatcher* we'll have a look at their docs

One other question I had. On the online listing it was listed as having outside storage space. On another viewing (after our offer was accepted) we asked to see this as we hadn't previously and the vendor gave us a puzzled look and told us there is no such thing.

Again not a deal breaker but we are a bit frustrated. Can we bring this up with the estate agent?

EAs can be a bit useless. The details of the house we eventually bought had it listed as 3 bedroomed, with a detached garage. Yes, it did have 3 rooms that had beds in but 1 was the loft that hadn’t been converted within building regs at the time so wasn’t a bedroom - it was a storage room, which is what we wanted it for anyway. Yes, there was a garage that the owner had built, but it was on a garage plot rented from the local council, so a) couldn’t be included in the valuation for mortgage purposes and b) there was no guarantee that we would be able to rent the plot from the council as there was a waiting list. All was solved to our satisfaction - we out in a lower offer to reflect these issues and contacted the council as did the vendor who transferred the plot rental contract over to us before the sale went through.

@Soontobe60 the EA we have been dealing with has been useless so far tbh. The flat is listed as being a maisonette: it isn't, it just has a big loft space that could be converted with planning permission and lots of £££. Then there is the no outside storage thing.

We have also had issues with the viewings: we were told the viewings would be held by the owner, it ended up being the owners friend but the EA kept telling us it was the owner! So we thought we were being purposely misled during the viewings. The whole thing was really uncomfortable if I'm being honest and the EA wasn't apologetic.

I feel a bit sick tonight because we paid a £300 holding fee today as the EA was pushing us (we were waiting to hear back from him to clarify what was happening at the viewings!) and we just panicked that we might lose it and regret it. But I think my fear of losing out has clouded my judgement as to whether we have been misled in any way and failed to query it, especially as the offer the seller accepted was a fair few thousand pounds above the 'offers above price' so it's not like we got it for 'cheap'.

Do you think we are too late now to query the price for it being listed as a maisonette when it absolutely isn't?

Where are you that charges a holding fee? I thought they were just for new builds/ off plan and you pay to the building company.

Also, maisonettes typically have two floors. Not always. They are upper flats with their own street level entrance.

And you may not own the loft space in a maisonette. Apparently, we don't as the cheeky bastard mgt company tried to flog it to us!

Holding fee?