Buying house with no building completion certificates

[Omgwtafisthat]

There have been a number of changes made my previous owner to the seller we are dealing with. Ground floor extension, loft conversion and chimney breast and internal wall removal. These would have been done at least 10-15 years ago.

Seller has no certificates for building control at all. Has anyone experienced this?

it’s an old house, and we have had a full structural survey which didn’t raise any concerns specifically but did recommend getting the certs. Outside of the period where you need indemnity insurance but it’s more of a safety point.

solicitors saying it could be a death trap and we would struggle to resell.

Get them to get the work signed off before you buy

Don’t buy it. Listen to your solicitor.

It isn’t that easy. Building control won’t just come along and say it looks fine, they have to uncover everything.

we are currently dealing with the mess our crook builders left. House looks fine on the surface but building control didn’t see crucial things so we are having to tear out ceilings etc to prove steels were fire wrapped etc etc.

id just get indemnity insurance though

Listen to your solicitor. They know what they are talking about.

Indemnity insurance won't be any use here, I wouldn't think, as its outside enforcement time for the Council and it wouldn't cover you for poor building work anyway.

We really want to buy the house. We’ve been trying to move for nearly a year.

the extensions were built some time ago and of course the entire house didn’t have building sign off due to its age.

as a pp said an indemnity won’t mean anything here.

I bought a house in similar circumstances, it was originally two properties, one residential, one commercial and converted to one residential house. No paperwork whatsoever. Because it was done in the 60's or 70's and the same owner sold it to us, it wasn't even on the land registry.

Extra paperwork required but it hasn't caused any issues, and didn't put us off as FTB. I would have been more cautious with a much newer change not having any sign off though.

In that case can you get a builder to price up what it would cost to make everything safe?

Hmm.

When your solicitor is saying it could be a death trap are there any actual specific issues that your survey has uncovered or is it more of a case of you just don't know how bad the quality could be underneath?

If it's a case of you just don't know how bad it could be, then I personally wouldn't worry too much. Most older houses don't have building control certificates and some of them have pretty dodgy building work.

Are there any specific concerns? Risk of fire from old wiring, fire exit from loft kind of thing?

Will your mortgage provider actually lend on it?

If they exist, they seller should be able to get them from the LA. They will still be in the archives if completed 10-15 years ago. If actually older than that they might not exist — the certificates only came in late 1980s and 90s.
An indemnity only protects against local authority enforcement, which will not happen after this time period, but an indemnity might make your solicitor happy.
But if your surveyor didn’t pick anything up, and if the house has been standing for more than 15 years without the other bits falling down, I don’t see why it should be a death trap, or why the lender wouldn’t lend. When we bought our current house it had a dodgy 1960s extension that we pretty much pushed over in order to demolish it.

We experienced this. Our solicitor wouldn't let us buy. They said it was not a habital property and that the mortgage lender would have to be informed. Miraculously the seller managed to get the LA to come and sign it off and issue the certificate in a few days so the sale could go ahead. The work was about three years or maybe four years old.

The local council may be able to provide them - 3 years ago I couldn’t find mine for an extension I had built 20 years prior, but the council were able to send them.

Check with LA
and do listen to your solicitor.

The survey probably said something like “the loft has been converted. The legal advisor should check that all necessary permissions are in place”.

This is the problem. OP get a builder to walk round with you and price up any work. We have a knock through that we didn't know whether it had a steel. We just pulled back the wall/plaster when we decorated. Added maybe £200 to the room. Steel was present and we have a sign off now.

It's hardly going to be a death trap if your survey came back ok. Given the age of the works, any issues would have likely presented themselves by now. My house has no building regs because it's old. Doesn't mean it's a death trap.

Can you get some money off for it?

Could you get the surveyor back around in light of this to do a more thorough assessment?

Thing is some of these are major structural changes.

Yes the seller could have got a professional in and had a careful assessment done on whether the internal wall was structural and whether it could be removed.

OTOH they could have just got Big Ted with a sledge hammer to bash the crap out of it til it came down, with the prior assessment being "yeah that'll be OK won't it".

Without proper certification how would you know whether the work was properly assessed before it was performed, and properly assessed afterwards ?

I've renovated house but wouldn't touch that without certifications. Unless you are planning on staying forever!

It will be very hard to sell.

I found the steel supports in my stud walls with a magnet. You could just then drill down to uncover the support. You get a feel for what the magnet feels like as it passes over the first edge of the support and then over the remaining edge as you move it over the surface. I can get the centre pretty accurately now. The stronger the magnet (NdFeB) the better.

This is what I’m really struggling with. For some people this would just not bother them at all, and for other people they would pull out the sale. I really don’t know what to do!

The building regs sign off would be for the regs which were in place when the work was done, so if you are expecting the changes to meet current standards they will not do. This is a common misunderstanding of getting sign off now for older works.

If you have had a full structural survey and it is ok, I would buy the house. If you want to really cover yourselves, have an electrical check done (note it will not meet the current Part P standards though, it will however tell you they are safe), also you could ask a structural engineer to check any RSJ's to see if they are the correct size (this may require removal of plaster though which the vendors may not be happy about).

A structural survey report saying all ok v a piece of paper signed - I know which I would prefer.

The important question is was building control inspecting during the build? Final sign off can get forgotten, I certainly did (rectified!) in my case because they wouldn't sign off until the patio was laid covering the below ground drain pipe (different colour), i forgot to get them back once the patio was laid the following summer (it was the only thing the inspector failed it on initially)

It's a buyer's market; take a builder with you to check the property and negotiate the price down accordingly.

Your OP contains the answer: solicitors saying it could be a death trap and we would struggle to resell.

Don't be foolish.

10-15 years ago is 2010-15, more or less. Some specific standards may have changed but this is not old work. A survey, especially a homebuyers, will not pick up on shonky work. We have both been the people who shrugged and says ‘how bad can it be, it’s just a formality’ and then the people who pulled out of a purchase like yours because we now know just how bad, and expensive, it can be.

It might just be the final sign off missing, as a PP suggests, which is fixable and happens a lot. But if not, think about the sort of low standards someone doing major building works without a sign off so recently must have and the sort of corners they might have crossed.