Can I sell my house without a building warrant for work started on a loft?

Lily73

We have a fixed staircase into the loft and it is floored but we haven't did anything else as my understanding has always been that in order for someone to be able to buy the house from us the changes must have a building warrant.

For financial reasons we can not afford to complete the work so where does that leave us if we want to sell our house? Could we still put the house on the market as it currently is? and how would this affect the buyer?

Any advice is appreciated...

ninky_2

yes you can still sell the house but any potential buyer will no doubt wish to negociate to reflect the situation in the asking price.

PasturesNew

You can sell the house, just let the EA and buyers know that it's an "attic room, ideal for storage" and not a bedroom or habitable room. The house will not be worth more than others with the same number of bedrooms that yours has, but having the attic as storage is likely to make it more interesting/useful to buyers to either use the space for storage or to carry out a legal conversion themselves as they can see the potential.

a_j_mair

you can sell as is but the addition of floored loft and fixed stair will add no more value than that of an unfloored loft with loft hatch as it has no permissions in place and cannot be sold as anything other than loft space as is illegal to be habitable area without relevant escape, fire protection etc

Lily73

Sorry I don't get on here as often as I'd like as my pc is broken and only get on when the kids are having a nap and I'm at my mums.

Thanks very much for your replies but now I'm really confused....I called our solicitor who would be dealing with the sale of our house and he said that anyone buying our house would probably run into problems getting a mortgage for our house as alterations had been done with no building warrant. However, the guy they sent out to value our house seemed to think if we just "hid" the stairs with gyprock (sp!) that would be enough. Then looking on the internet at other houses and I recently seen one saying there was a fixed stair case to a floored and lined attic.

I don't know what to do now!!