Hopefully someone can help me out with this one as I’m totally confused.
We’re in the process of buying a property. At some stage (I gather just under 10 years ago) the current owners have knocked through the wall separating their dining and living room. Unfortunately they weren’t aware they needed building regs and this has been flagged up by our survey/solicitors. Their solicitors suggested indemnity insurance but our solicitors have advised not to accept this solution as it only covers against council action, not if the works actually haven’t been done properly and the works end up being structurally unsound. Our solicitors painting scary stories of the risk whereby the structure fails and building insurance won’t payout because of lack of regs. They have advised us to ask the vendors to get retrospective building regs certificate. Estate agents making us and solicitors out to be unreasonable - people accept indemnity insurance all the time in these scenarios, saying that vendors solicitors are saying building regs not needed now because works are nearly 10 years old, in a few months they won’t even need to declare the works etc. So question 1 is: which set of solicitors are “right”.
The sellers have now said that we can get a structural engineer in at our expense to check the work and make good their (presumably 10 years old but still very nice and expensive looking) kitchen diner after. I’ve been on the phone with one and it involves quite invasive drilling of holes/removal of plaster. He said it’s unusual for buyers to do it pre purchase for this reason and usually they apply once in. But surely by that time they’re already committed and what happens if the work is no good. So question 2: what normally happens in these circumstances. What is a reasonable compromise?