Buying a house with neighbour's structure attached to house wall???

[Paddrs]

Hello all.

I've had an offer on a property accepted but I've got some concerns about a lean-to/outbuilding that is in the neighbour's garden against the wall of the house I'd be buying. I've attached a photo. It seems there's cladding against "my" wall and whatever the structure is it has electric cabling wired to it from the neighbour's house.

I'll be trying to chase up answers from the estate agent about it but I'm not optimistic that they will give any real answers. I'm tempted to ask the neighbour's themselves but I don't feel like that's necessarily such a great idea.

Is this something I should be so concerned about? It feels like I should know how much the structure is connected to the wall? Where would I stand with repairs? If I paid for a survey would they even have access to check it out?

In principle I'm not really all that fussed about the building being there but I can't help thinking about is they've done some drilling into the wall and it's gonna be slowly filling up with rain water and I'll buy a house and one of the walls is going to fall off.

Soz for such a rambling post. Any advice is much appreciated.

Can you see the roof of it more clearly on Google earth ?
i think it is probably a long standing lean-to, maybe an old glasshouse, that they have re-roofed and now added power cables to. The roofing could cause issues for you depending on how well it has been done.

Where you say “both structures “ here, what do you mean, are there two buildings there ?
I can’t work out that strange dipping section behind the roof apex of the building.

When I say both structures it's because I'm guessing that the corrugated roof is one structure and the roof with the cladding is another but I'm not really sure that's the case. They could all be one thing with different bits of roof

So the cladding is that weird thing that seems to be dipping in the middle ? Has Google earth shed any light ?

If it's been there either 8 or 12 years (I forget the rule) then there's bugger all you can do about it.

That’s for planning permission, though - I am sure that building regs would still be necessary, and that would include the build not compromising next door’s fabric. I’d contact building control as well as planning enforcement to check that it has building regs. They are two completely separate things.

I thought you were just talking about it leaning on the driveway wall, but It does look like they've actually built it into your house wall, and tied the roof in of the structure furthest away.. The previous occupiers must have agreed for this to happen, there's no way you can do that discretely....I'd ask the neighbour.

Personally I'd ask the EA to go back to the vendor. Whoever they sell to is goingto want to know about this adjoining building, so it's in their interests to have a definitive and positive answer to possible buyers' questions.

I've heard back from the estate agents. The vendor has told them they don't know about any party wall agreement or anything (the buildings were already there when they moved in). The vendors have said that they had NatWest do a survey as part of the mortgage but I don't think it'd be as good as a real survey. They got the loan though.

Google maps doesn't show up anything unfortunately

I'd look elsewhere - but then I am suspicious about the WHOLE world and what their devious aims are... 😯