House listed as 4 bed is actually 3 bed

[RanchRat]

Have had our offer accepted on a 4 bed house. The survey came back yesterday with the info that there are no building regs for the 4th (attic) bedroom and it is not proertly insulated.
AIBU to balk at paying the 4 bed premum for a 3 bed property. The house next door (other half of the semi) and is a 3 bed is on the market for £50,000 less. I like the house but don't want to be out of pocket. WWYD.

Building regs aside, the loft room needs to have a fire door and a window to escape from. The floor joists need to have been upgraded (usually they have been).
As per PP, if you buy it and for some reason need to sell next year, you’ll be the one struggling to sell.
It’s not up to you to investigate the legal situation, it’s up to the vendors to clarify it.

A mortgage can still be got on this property depending on how much deposit is being put down.

If you offer as a three bedroom, are you prepared to spend the money insulating and doing any works necessary to make it habitable and in keeping with regulations? Otherwise you might have a room you can’t use, as well as difficulties of you want to sell down the line.

Does that really matter if she pays the non converted price or near as damn? It’s a good storage attic or a games / party room for the kids etc when they get older if op has or is intending to have kids.

Usually an indemnity policy is bought by owner and passed to you during sale. Loft conversions are frequently not done to building regs standards. Why don’t you buy nextdoor and do your own conversion? Your seller will find another buyer who will accept the indemnity policy, it’s not really a massive deal, even if you see it as one.

My house is like this because it’s Victorian. The attic room, which is a full attic with full staircase access, does not meet modern building regs so was sold as 3 but in reality the attic is the largest bedroom.

We have seen houses that were ‘4 beds’ if you counted the living room as a bedroom!! Ie advertised as 4 beds and then one of the ‘bedrooms’ is the living room! We thought they’d just left the pictures of it off but no, because they had dining rooms then they could class it as a 4 bed as the dining room was the ‘living room’. Smallest living rooms ever!

Simply walk away, do you really need the hassle?

Do you really need a bedroom in the loft and does it have building consent in the first place, and from that building regs approval? I would be cautious about safe access and egress in an emergency?

I live on a street of Edwardian semis. Both my friend and I have had attic rooms created last year. Ours was a full loft conversion meeting all building regs and cost £80k. My friend converted the attic not meeting building requirements for a third of the cost. They were told it couldn’t be marketed as a fourth bedroom, only a hobby room.

I could see how a 3 + hobby room could be worth more than a 3 bed without, but certainly shouldn’t be valued as a 4th bed.

I’d personally start with the estate agent as clarify if they have valued it as a full 4 bed, as they wouldn’t have seen building regs to qualify it as one.

I have lived in a property with bedrooms in the loft, I wouldn’t recommend, honestly stifling hot in summer and freezing cold in the winter, if you really need a four bed, try to find one without loft conversion would be my advice.

Mine is the same, as are all my neighbours. No problem selling it as a two bed with loft room. I pulled out of a sale last year as I couldn’t find an onwards purchase but our buyers loved the loft and said it was one of their main reasons for buying ours (as they wanted to have their offices and art studio up there). Mortgage companies were fine to lend on it. As long as it’s not being marketed as a bedroom it’s fine. This is where your sellers have screwed up.

I have lived in a property with bedrooms in the loft, I wouldn’t recommend, honestly stifling hot in summer and freezing cold in the winter
Only if it's not been insulated properly. If it meets current building regs (which this one doesn't), it should be fine.

If there are no building regs approval then there is the very real possibility that the work was shoddily done and could be structurally unsafe.
And a fire risk without the correct FD30 fire doors.
Is there an fire alarm / heat alarm system?

You'd be foolish to continue with this. They've deliberately tried to deceive potential buyers, and you as an you've made an offer on it and paid for a survey.

I'd be pissed off at them wasting your time and money, and pull out, either offer on next door and carry out a loft conversion there, or buy an alternative actual 4 bedroomed house.

If you continue, even if they agree to accept £50K less, you'll have all the hassle of fixing what they didn't do properly. If you bought next door, you could get it done properly from the start.

My friend had this exact scenario in a GU area code very recently, they chose to walk away as the sellers didn't want to reduce their asking money but there's no way the 'extra bedrooms' would pass building regs inspections.

It may not have building regs, because as in our case, the attic was converted before building regs existed.

Ours was done in 1975. It has full planning permission and building officers from the local authority came round several times to inspect.

The surveyor made similar comments in his report to our buyer and I shot him down as my father had kept every single piece of paper relating to the extension. There was absolutely no way I was accepting that the loft bedroom wasn't a fourth bedroom. Fortunately, threads like this had warned me in advance of the house going on the market and I had time to comb through filing cases and scan them all.

We convinced the buyer. He wanted £40k off and I said no, he could have £10k off towards some other work he claimed was necessary on condition he accepted the offer within 24 hours and there were no more negotiations.

He moved in a few weeks ago.

The fact it’s not properly insulated doesn’t necessarily discount the loft conversion. Do you mean they converted the loft without a building regulations application? Or do you mean it was converted before the regs applied?

You mention the purlins, but what exactly do you mean? In a modern loft conversion, there would be more to upgrade than the purlins. Your main concern here should be the means of escape in case of fire and when the loft was converted.

Even if you get it with a discount, do not buy it. No indemnity policy will save you from having an illegal extension that may not be compliant with building regs.

I had a survey done on a place with no planning and it turned out also not to have insulation, appropriate support or proper drainage. I ran away.

When was the conversion was done?
If it was done 50 years ago, there won’t be any building regs. Our house was once a bungalow but was converted in 1960s to have two large bedrooms upstairs. There are no building regs but had no issues at all with buying it last year. However the survey showed it is fully insulated recently and has a very wide staircase so no issues with an escape route

Building regs aside, the loft room needs to have a fire door and a window to escape from.

I do wish people wouldn’t offer misinformation like this.

A loft conversion would only have an escape window if it was under a certain height, ie a converted bungalow. Means of escape via a loft window on the 2nd floor was removed from the regulations decades ago as it was deemed too high. The standard way to comply now is to provide a means of escape leading to a final exit, protected on all floors by fire doors to habitable rooms. But the approved documents are not prescriptive, and there are many ways to prove compliance.

Make an offer on neighbours house then. You shouldn't pay for work that has no planning permission. This seller must have known so I would be cross they wasted my time tbh. I'd also complain to EA because they are supposed to ask sellers if it has planning permission.

You're possibly confusing planning permission with building regs.

I wondered how long it would be before someone mentioned an indemnity policy.

The problem is an indemnity policy only covers the cost of any enforcement action from the council for not having building regs. I.e potentially ripping it all out and putting back to how it was. It doesn’t indemnify against any loss in value from
the house going to a 4 bed to a 3 bed.

I think it matters if it has an impact on the possibility of a future sale, plus, as several posters have said, uninsulated spaces are very cold in winter and airless in warm weather, so you’d either have to spend money on upgrading or be restricted as to its usage.

It will affect resell value - now you know this you cannot list it as a 4bed. I’d suggest lowering your offer. They’ll have this issue with anyone who buys it