loft conversion question

No expert, but saw one of those location, location type programs that featured a house with a non-building-reg approved loft conversion, and it was the current owner/the seller who was told to offer to pay for indemnity insurance, to save the issue of having to rip the whole thing apart to get it approved. A quick look on Google seems to confirm that it would be the seller who would pay for this. This is only to cover you against financial loss should action be taken for not having the appropriate approval, but not sure it would cover any costs towards damage caused by improper workmanship, so bear this in mind.
I would wonder if the answer to 3 was vague because of the data protection act? Not sure if the estate agent would be allowed to state the exact reason.

DannyboyMidlands wrote: »

If it was me I would ignore the loft conversion, base any offer on it being a 2 bedroom property and be totally up front about it. It's his problem for cutting corners not yours. There are so many of these botch artists around and as a builder he should have known better. Building Regs approval only costs a few hundred quid so if he must have really done things on the cheap.

Building Regs covers things like fire escape (ie how do you get out if the stairs are on fire), structural design, insulation, ventilation...............too many to list. Indemnity or not, I wouldn't touch it without building regs.

You should be able to check the planning application for free on your local government website.

You are right to be sceptical about the EA. They will say ANYTHING to get a sale.

Having a certificate and being up to standard are different things. Making the assumption that it's done badly, there's the possibility you might end up missing out on a bit of a bargain.

me and the Mrs are FTBs and there is a nice property that we are interested in. current owner is a builder and needs to sell as he has moved away due to family reasons.

he converted the loft into a room/3rd bedroom.

He's a builder and he would know that he had to convert to building regs standards, he didn't - and there will be a very good reason for that.

Errata wrote: »

He's a builder and he would know that he had to convert to building regs standards, he didn't - and there will be a very good reason for that.

It could be that the head height was 5cm too short for them to be happy. It could even be that he did it to building regs standard but was expecting it to be a forever house so never bothered with it knowing he'd done it right and didn't understand the implications when coming to sell. Of course, he might have stuck some plasterboard over what was there, but we don't know until we've looked and the fact that it's being marketed at less than a similar property might just be a bit of a bonus.

I don't see the point in being less interested in something if you can't be bothered to do the homework. We all should have surveys carried out on every property. Just because a problem isn't presented to you as one, doesn't mean there isn't a greater one hiding. The OP could even ask for the vendor to pay for a structural engineer to have a look.

Every house, unless it's totally brand new will have some aspects that far from meets building regulations. Yes, new work should have sign off, but it doesn't mean that it is totally substandard work that needs heavily rectifying before you can use it. The main walls of the house may be solid with no insulation to speak of and no ability to ever really do it, but if they don't put enough in the new loft space, it makes it a total non-starter as a purchase?

It's far more of a grey area than some make out.

Did he do the conversion himself? If so, ask him directly why it doesn't have building regs. You don't necessarily have to take his answer as gospel truth (chances are it won't be) but his attitude to you asking and the answers he chooses to give will tell you a lot about why it hasn't been done.

For example, he could be totally open and honest and say "there was no way to get a staircase up there with enough headroom to satisfy BR criteria without completely sacrificing one of the rooms downstairs which defeated the object of putting it in to get an extra room. So I chose to go ahead anyway but as you can see at the top of the stairs there is only 1.7m clearance when it should have been 1.8m (example numbers only!). However I did [add extra beams, put a steel into the floor below, double up on the joists/trusses, whatever] to make sure that the structure was sound.
In this case you could get a structural engineer to give an opinion - without being able to look behind the plasterboard to check he can't guarantee the structure but he can check for warning signs and look at anything that is accessible. And you can form your own judgement on whether the head height problem (and the subsequent resale problem) are things you can live with.

Or, alternatively, he might go quiet and shifty and try to convince you that BR approval wasn't necessary as he had PP. In which case, you can follow up with more Q's about the work he did but that would be something to take with a large pinch of salt.

And if he appears to geniunely believe himself that BR isn't needed, run a mile because the chances are he's king of the bodge-job builders and you don't want to be saddled with his poor workmanship to put right!