Garage Conversion with no building regs

[Owlgirl14]

We are in the process of buying a house which has a partial garage conversion into an additional living space e.g snug/play room. The front of the garage has stayed the same, i.e still has a garage door and has been used for storage.

Our solicitor has identified that the work would have required building regulation approval, however the sellers are saying that it didn't require it. The solicitor is saying in their opinion it would and after some research I also now think it does. So our options are:

1. Ask the sellers to contact the local authority and apply for retrospective building regulation regularisation certificate

2. Ask the sellers to provide at their own expense upon completion a building regulation indemnity insurance.

Just wondering if anyone has any opinions or experience of this.

We are thinking of going for option 1 as option 2 wouldn't cover any structural issues. And by looking at the photos of the property there is only one small window high up so assuming it wouldn't meet fire regulations as there would be no way to escape. So there may be other issues too which need to be rectified.

We really like the house as it is in a great location, near to the school/nursery etc. so hoping we are able to resolve this. We had offered full asking price too.

Any advice would be much appreciated 😊

My understanding (and from doing a quick google now) is that the majority (90%) of garage conversions don’t need planning regs and fall under permitted development. Getting your sellers to do option 1 will take a lot of time and may not be feasible. If the building inspector wants to check things like a steel beam as an example then it may mean taking off all the plaster or otherwise destroying the property, and your sellers may be understandably less than keen on doing this. What if the inspector then says I won’t certify until x,y,z are done - are your sellers realistically going to spend 000’s putting things right in a property they want out of?

If your solicitor is kicking up a fuss then it’s likely your bank will want an indemnity insurance issued, and this is quick and cheap. We looked at a property with a liveable loft conversion that wasn’t done to regs and I think the insurance was something like 70 quid from memory. If your solicitor is representing both you and the bank then they clearly won’t authorise the mortgage drawdown until this is resolved, so it’ll need doing somehow.

We knocked two rooms into one in our previous house and didnt do building regulations as the builder said we didnt to, but it later transpired we should have. When we sold the house two years ago our solicitor arranged indemnity insurance which cost us around £55 I think. No big problem at all

Option 1, regularisation certificate. Experience of this on a very recent sale and purchase. The regularisation cert will cost them about £180 but you would have reassurance that there are no safety issues concerning the conversion.

Call the local authority planning department for guidance first, they are pretty helpful when they are getting money for old rope 🙄they will confirm if one is needed, and will point you to the link where the seller needs to apply for the planning visit and subsequent certificate.

IMO it didn't take more than a couple of weeks on the property we were selling, may have taken longer on the one we were buying as they had to have a fan installed to bring meet compliance.

We got indemnity insurance for this. The conversion was done years earlier, and the survey showed the house structure was was fine.

Do not call the council until you've had advice from your solicitor. I can't remember the details but we were told that as soon as something like this is flagged to the council you are no longer eligible to get indemnity insurance. So get legal advice before making any specific inquiries about the property.

I think if you classify it as storage you can get round this then up to you how you use the room