FTB There is no planning permission

tododo

Hi all again

This house buying process is no fun

We have had letter today from our solicitor to advise that the vendors party doesnt have PP for the kitchen extension.

Great.......our solicitor has asked for them for an indemity policy.....which I guess is basically some protection. The extension was built in the 1980s we think

If the vendor does not pay for this policy.....would u recommend pulling out of the sale??

Theres a LOT of work that needs doing to the house immediately.......only yesterday we found out that the gas is unsafe and a THREAT TO LIFE AND PROPERTY!!! Why didnt they tell us this before we put the offer in......


And today we get this letter.......Im ready to pull out persoanaly as we are putting most of our money down on deposit......we will have a few grand left over for the gas to be done and everything else will have to take time.

If the vendor doesnt offer this policy would you recommend knocking the price down a great deal??? We are going to go back anyway to knock him down but this PP issue just adds to my doubts about the whole thing?

Thanks for any info yet again.....this forum is supporting us big time. MASSIVE learning curve

alanobrien

There is a time limit on these things.
When we bought our place last year they could not find the planning permission for the extension which was some 30 yrs old. In the end something was found which indicated the council agreement however we were told that because it was over 25 yrs old it wasnt a problem anyway.

I guess your seller would need retrospective permission or have to supply the indemnity. I would ask your solicitor about any time limit on the extension building i.e. It has been enjoyed for X years.

If no time limit exists i would personally not go for it unless the sellar provided an indemnity. I doubt to many others would either as the council could demand it was torn down......unlikely but possible.

RiskAdverse100

If the extension was put up 30 years ago then too long has passed for the local authority to be able to take any action if no planning permission was obtained for it.

Indemnity Insurance is a complete waste of time for a situation such as this.

You do need to be sure that the extension was done properly and there are no structural problems that need to be investigated. If it is still standing after 30 years then this would suggest that nothing obvious is wrong! This should have been covered in your survey.

If work needs to be done to the property that you didn't know about when you put in your offer then you should ask for something off the price. You should certainly be concerned that if the sellers have a dodgy gas supply then there could be other things wrong as well.

RiskAdverse100

tazgirl

Yes, an indemnity should cover it. We're in a similar situation in that the property we're (hopefully) buying has a rear extension and a front porch. No record can be found of PP, or how long ago they were done, so we're getting an indemnity - only costing £100 in our case - sellers wouldn't pay for it as we've already had money off original offer. We're looking at it as peace of mind, and also a benefit when we come to sell as other people would have the same concerns.

I'd also certainly go back and lower your offer based on the work that needs doing (presuming it wasn't immediately obvious when you viewed the property as in that case the price probably already reflected the work that needs doing) - get a couple of quotes for how much it'll take to do, then add a bit for the inconvenience of having to do it, and suggest a new offer. Obviously this depends on how far under asking price you originally went, and how much you want the house...

jeetster

When we sold our last house we had to pay for an idemnity where they could not find plans where the house had been altered in the past. This cost me about £180, and the solicitor said that most lenders will lend money without one. I see no reason why the seller won't pay for one certainly if he wants to seel the house.

Regarding the Gas supply, if Transco get wind of this they'll simply shut off your gas supply with or without your permission. We found this when we moved to our new house and when we got BG into service the boiler and becuse there was insuffciient ventitlation and the flue had a cap missing outside they had to inform transco.(I asked BG to fix it, but apparently it was too old and they would not touch it, last time I use them!!!). So then the transco comes around...anyway because it wasn't that bad we came to an informal aggreement. So either get some money off or get them to do the work.

Hope this helps.

silvercar

I wouldn't worry to much about PP for an extension done in the 80s. i would want to know if there was building regs consent. Check that hte indemnity policy covers this.

Dangerous gas and shoddy conversion would make me get a very good price or walk away. What else haven't they done?

tododo

Thanks guys for the advice

Just spoken to a gas man that lives opposite my mothers......he gave me a rough price on cost of doing the work and offered to do it!!! Some good news anyway.

The original price was £170000 then it was advertised at £165000 it was accepted at £155000. The property is vacant.

Basically we knew it needed gas and electrics as they were old......now with that gas report we understand how badly it is needed........... then we found out the garage was made of asbestos....and surveyor recommended demolition....so that shouldnt be included in the price really anyway

It needs updating internally, kitchen, bathroom need complete renewal, and then general decoration

It is quite a lot for a ftb but my folks reakon it will be a lovely house in a good area when its finished......

I think i will try to knock of another £10000 if thats possible and see what they say as I dont think they will agree to it but they may meet us halfway maybe

By the way do we contact solicitor or EA regarding changing the price??

silvercar

Contact EA. Make a big fuss of garage needing demolition and rebuilding.

Miss_Penny_Pincher_2

Be wary about the asbestos. We got a survey on a house that said it could have asbestos and I thought nothing of it. A few weeks later, I think on "how to be a property developer" on Channel 5, a couple of wannabe property developers put an offer on a house where the survey came back saying the house being made of asbestos i think which made it practically worthless - they ended up getting about £100,000 extra off the price because of the asbestos but they did have to rebuild a lot of the house.

tododo

Hi all

Just an update, the seller will not sell for anything less than £155000......we have tried to knock the price down but they are not budging....they basically said that they took garage into consideration on the £155000 price

We are still going for it.........its a decent price still even if loads of work needs doing

Question I have now is that the sellers wont pay for the indemity cost....my solicitor has now sent a letter for payment of the indemity policy for the protection of my lender at a cost of £70.

Does this mean we have to have the policy even if the extension was built in 1983??

matto

I suspect the extension - presuming it's single storey - may not even have needed planning permission but would have fallen within permitted development rights.

The idemnity policy seems worthless. Even if the extension needed planning permission there is nothing anybody can do about it now. These idemnity policies seem to be increasingly pushed by solicitors and I suspect they get a nice cut of the price. If I were your sellers I wouldn't be paying.