Age of house?

clairet707

How do you find out the age of the house / when it was built?

We have been told by 3 separate people that the house we currently live in is 1930s

The house we are buying is almost identical and yet the valuation has come back saying it is 1950s

Does this make any difference to anything?

FreeLocateMe.co.uk

If you have an old house them you probably have deeds to go with this which should contain the age of your house. More recent sales are done using Land Registry doc's.

CloudCuckooLand

A HIP might include mention of the original title date in the Land Registry section.

SUESMITH_2

the date our house was built was on our deeds, and we also got info on when it was first mortgaged. they also told us we couldnt keep pigs or chickens, or run a pub but could extend it in anyway provididng we found the original builder and he agreed to our plans!

clairet707

The house we are in currently is rented and although i have the land registry details (we were considering buying it off our landlady at one point) it doesnt state year of build.

The HIP for house we are buying doesnt say - the land registry details are included (we put an offer in 5 days after it went on market - so some details are missing)

The land registry doesnt have a listing for house we are buying - which is intriguing - but vendor has lived there since 1984 so that could be why

LandyAndy

clairet707 wrote: »

How do you find out the age of the house / when it was built?

We have been told by 3 separate people that the house we currently live in is 1930s

The house we are buying is almost identical and yet the valuation has come back saying it is 1950s

Does this make any difference to anything?

The style and building methods of houses were pretty similar between 1930s and 1950s so it can be fairly easy to mistake one for the other.

Horizon81

From what I've seen, the info in the HIP - land registry details - tells you when the land was acquired, which just means when the plot of land was bought, not when the house was actually built. I would have thought you could request this further information from the Land Registry??

Certainly don't believe the vendor or the rough estimate on the survey.

clairet707

Thanks

Would anyone be able to tell from a picture?

Richard_Webster

The Land Registry do not hold any specific record of when houses were built.

You can look at the style of house and estimate, but as others have said, 1930s and 1950s are fairly similar.

The only way I could see to try to get a definite date is to ask the Council if they have any records of when a building inspector did his final inspection. the records may be so old as to have been archived and not available or may never existed because built before such inspections.

Go and look at 1:1250 and 1:1056 Ordnance extracts in local library or Council archives. If the house wasn't there on one plan but was on a later one then you know it was built between those dates.

Then you look at the "deeds". If the title is unregistered there will be an old conveyance of a field at some point in the past and then a later conveyance of a plot of land "together with the messuage or dwellinghouse erected thereon". You then know the house was built between the two dates. If the latter conveyance was by a builder then it is quite likely that it would only have just been built at that time.

However some builders in the 1930s built houses for short term lets. One in my area conveyed a chunks of land containing maybe 20 plots between side turnings on one side of a road to various family members in the 1930s and then went on to build houses which the family members let out and they were eventually sold in 1950s to 1990s so you would not know exactly when they were built.

You generally find that houses built before WW1 were initially retained by builders a let to short term tenants and only sold much later after WW11 so the date of a conveyance will not really help - you just have to assume that they were built shortly after the builder acquired the land from a landowner if the old deeds show that.

If the title is registered there is a reference to a conveyance or transfer by a builder then that is a good date to start from (subject to the point in the last paragraphs if the property was initially tenanted). With more recently built property the date the builder sold it is a more reliable guide in most cases.

The date of registration is not going to help because that is simply the date the property was first registered, and that usually depends on when compulsory registration was introduced in the particular area and the next sale after that date.

Ex Council houses would have been sold under the Right to Buy or earlier voluntary schemes to sitting tenants and the date of the sale will have had nothing to do with the date of construction.

Cannon_Fodder

Try the council planning website.

Online applications go back to the 40s, sometimes.

You might see the "breaking ground" application, with a plot number, rather than your precise house number, but it should be indicative.

chappers

Also have a look at manhole/drain covers on your property or in the street many were made local and in those days some where dated