Hi all,
We are slooooooowly proceeding with the purchase of a house. No chain, just absolutely rubbish solicitor (long story).
We should be almost ready to exchange but the solicitor has now emailed us with a long list of things. Most of these should have been raised a month or so ago. Deep sigh.
We had a level 3 survey and it found damp in the property. The surveyor obviously suggested a proper specialist damp survey (mega £££). We had a really long and extensive chat with the surveyor on the phone because we're planning on doing a huge amount of building work immediately (building an annexe for DM and extending main house). The walls/floor that have damp in them are being ripped up and replaced anyway. There's also a very obvious cause - a down pipe which is misaligned and has been pissing down the wall of the house. Thankfully only damp downstairs and not that bad - only picked up on survey, not spotted by architect/builders/us.
The surveyor agreed with us that there's not really much point getting the damp survey because we're ripping out all the areas that have damp in them. Floor is coming up and walls coming down. He agreed he wouldn't bother with damp survey either in our position.
The solicitor is now saying that she might be obliged to tell our mortgage lender about the damp and asking for our consent to do so. Do we have to do this??? If we hadn't paid out for a level 3 survey the bank wouldn't know and the survey was for our benefit, not theirs. So my question is do we have to tell them and if so, are they likely to care very much? We haven't told them about the building work yet - currently awaiting planning permission which we expect to be granted - we obviously would have done so once we have the keys and get the green light to proceed. if it makes a difference the mortgage is only about 25% of the property value.
The other, unrelated, question is about CIL. Solicitor has just told us that our property has a covenant which means CIL could be payable and I quote:
"The property is within an area where the Community Infrastructure Levy is charged for relevant developments. A development is liable for CIL if it:
creates a new dwelling of any size; or creates over 100sqm of gross internal floorspace (new build), before making deductions for existing floorspace that is to be demolished; and involves new buildings or floorspace into which people normally go."
We aren't adding 100 sq metres of new space and the existing house is already over 100 sq metres. So does this mean CIL won't apply? The solicitor literally just said this and nothing more and I'm a bit confused!
If you got this far, thanks for sticking with it. We've only just found out that the existing extension doesn't have planning permission/building regs plus some other stuff so just when we thought we were nearly over the line, a load of shit has popped up. I don't think any of it is insurmountable but I'm gradually losing the will to live.
Can anyone help with the CIL and damp survey questions please?