No building regs - do we walk?

[Dottyyy1]

The house we have offered on has turned up a few issues after survey/solicitor searches, namely lack of buildings regs for:

• removal of chimney breasts. Not clear how stack is supported

-internal walk knocked through

• loft room no regs, although was marketed as useful loft space not a bedroom. Still, no fire doors

Survey did not show up any structural concerns although stated the above should have regs so covered himself. Due to price rises similar properties are now £20k more expensive which we can’t afford right now.

Are we mad to even consider it, and try to fix these issues after we move in? Or are we buying an unsaleable unmortgeable money pit.

Sellers have only offered indemnity.

Could the seller get retrospective building regs? Or ask for indemnity insurance as part of the sale.

The chimneystack is the main possible issue from a safety point of view, if the stack has been removed on both floors then that's usually safer as whatever they've used to support it has less weight to hold. Normally in the old days they used what's called "gallows brackets", they'll do the job if it's just the small bit of chimneystack left in the loft conversion, I wouldn't want to risk them holding up any more though. Have a look from the outside and check if the chimney's leaning or if it has any cracks in it - use your phone camera perhaps to zoom in. If it's leaning or has cracks then I'd either walk away or get a few grand knocked off to fix it. Also, if next door decides to remove their chimneystack you need to make them aware as whatever solution they come up with will more then likely affect your chimney.

If you're planning to stay there for a long time I personally wouldn't worry about the rest of it. Our house has a loft room, rear two storey extension, chimney breast removed on both floors, staircase position changed, all done around 1980. The mortgage company didn't even ask to get indemnity insurance as it was done so long ago. (For what it's worth, all the work was done very well though). The house was a good price as the sellers were desperate to move to a bigger house down the road and we've no plans to move, so I wasn't concerned - I considered the cheaper price to be a fair trade.

Fire doors don't cost much anyway, about £70 each fitted. It could be worth getting mains interconnected smoke alarms - our house has these.

A lot of houses have work that doesn't have building regs or even planning permission, the area I live in has about 50 terraced houses, all with various forms of rear extension, some with loft conversions, etc, all done many years ago. Only one has had planning permission!

The only thing we (or rather the seller) had to get indemnity insurance for was the uPVC windows and doors, as they were only a few years old but had never been signed off by Building Control, cost the seller £35.

I’d get the chimney stack properly looked at, because that could be unsafe.

How long ago was it all done? Our last house had a similar loft conversion with no regs - claimed it was done by person previous to them, but we got indemnity insurance and it was an ‘occasional room’ rather than a bedroom for marketing purposes.

I wouldn’t necessarily walk away as long as the chimney is safe.

Indemnity insurance is fairly pointless, it doesn't stop faulty building work from collapse or causing cracking etc. It might be difficult to get insurance without proper fire doors in the loft, or render insurance invalid at a later date.

Why take on someone else's problem?

If you can't find anything else, the price is right, mortgage company aren't bothered and safety concerns are alleviated I would buy it. There's nothing else out there. The greedy people hoovering up houses aren't bothered by stuff like this.

That wouldn’t hugely bother me except maybe the chimney. It’s probably got an RSJ which won’t be too hard to find out.

I pulled out of a purchase because of loft room. In theory it is supposed to be referred to the mortgage lender. When they do the valuation they assume the solicitor is checking all paperwork in place. If not the solicitor is supposed to flag it. If you do a forum search you will see that some lenders withdraw mortgage if this is raised to them. Problem with these illegal loft conversions (because that is exactly what they are) is that it could cause an issue reselling and also impact insurance. Building regs are there for a good reason. Just because you don't call it a bedroom doesn't mean building regs don't apply!

Also remember that EA always say that the "loft room just needs fire doors" but if that's the case why doesn't the seller do it. Usually it is more than that, the floors have not been strengthened adequately, substandard insulation etc and escape has to be adequately fire rated (i.e other doors need to be fire doors, not just loft). As someone has mentioned already, why take on someone else problem?

Indemnity is worthless as it overs only situations highly unlikely to occur (e.g. legal costs to defend against a council action) and does not cover the cost of any building work to remedy either a collapse or to reinstate per any council demand.

You would be paying a huge amount of money to the vendors to take a potentially worthless problem off their hands. Why would you do that?

Are we mad to even consider it

You are mad to even consider it.

My uncle who is a surveyor said to me "a 3 bed house with an illegal loft conversion is worth less than a 3 bedroom house"

Thank you for the very useful responses. We are still in two minds over what to do. We have some funds aside to potentially fix this, finding somewhere else at the moment means stretching ourselves too far to get the same amount of space.

If the chimney needed fixing and we got building control out, would that invalidate indemnity insurance for the other parts that don’t have building regs? And potentially ruin any further remortgage...

I'd imagine getting building control out would invalidate any indemnity insurance (the insurance is in case building control try to retrospectively enforce regulations onto you), it would also be madness, as building regulations have changed massively over the years, it would be bound to fail, just as a house 15 years old wouldn't pass current regulations. They also are very unlikely to enforce building regulations for building work done over 10 years ago anyway. If the chimneystack has been removed on the ground and first floor, and there's no sign of cracking in the internal plaster, and no sign of cracking on the chimney brickwork and the chimney isn't leaning, the odds are that it's fine.

Where I live no one cares about building regulations on the older work that was done on houses, most of the houses around here would be unsellable if it was such an issue. The values here are low and people didn't always get the right paperwork (or indeed any) when doing work to them, it's only recently that terrace houses here have gone above £100k!

If you're really worried though and it'll play on your mind, you'd be better buying a house that hasn't been changed around, it'll probably cost you more though. The other alternative would be a new build, but people have problems with those too. Houses always come with problems, one way or the other.

Is it in Budleigh Salterton by any chance?

We uncovered a couple of building reg issues when we bought our house. It affected the house insurance because we knew that in certain scenarios insurance wouldn’t pay out. So we got £20k knocked off before we bought so that we could do the remedial work

one of these things wouldnot make me walk away if it's well documented. i.e. photos of the building works, of the steel.

but 3 three structural issues - yes run as fast as the wind.