Illegal loft conversion conundrum

timmyt

scros wrote: »

HELP - I need some advice. We’ve bought a maisonette that was marketed and sold to us as a 3 bedroom property. The main (in our eyes) bedroom is a loft room. We asked and asked our lawyer to double check all was fine with it, plus the survey said she should confirm the correct consents had been received. Her response was that everything was fine - the room was definitely ours and if we needed any work done to meet modern building regs, we had indemnity insurance to cover it. If the Council enforced you would be covered gfor any costs, true, if that is what you mean

We moved in and decided to put in an extra velux window, so to be safe we asked the Building Inspector to come round and give the OK – he immediately said the room was unsafe and that the floor would need re-doing the Council cannot require you to do these works after a period of 1 year, unless there is a danger to health and saftey. Have you gone back to your lawyers to get their views? . A 2 minute phone call later, we find out it's a completely illegal room. Now, to be positive, they are not going to make us rip it out and are very keen to help us end up with a fully compliant room. But it's going to cost us a fortune (need steels in the floor etc) and I don’t think our indemnity insurance covers it as we went to the council ourselves and the room is so old that we’re not being enforced to do anything.

Some advice would be helpful on 2 matters:

1.Is the estate agent not liable in any way for marketing and selling a 3 bedroom property that it turns out clearly is not 3 beds. I assume they'll claim that it's solely down to our solicitor to sort.They would be correct, as they do not check the legal position. That is why you have a lawyer.

2.Did we just receive bad advice from our solicitor? You were covered by legal indemnity insurance. As soon as you approached the Council, you invalidated your insurance as you drew the Council's attention to the works. Did you not think that having the Council come along to a house where you had no Local Authority consent was risky? Can we sue? Sue who, why? You caused your own loss. Your lawyers have charged you next to nothing toget you a lovely home and you now blame them?

Is there anything we can do – we don’t really feel that we’ve done much wrong at all – possibly been naïve and relied totally on the advice / honesty of others. But we've clearly bought a 2 bed flat with a loft space for the price of a 3 bed - plus to sort it out it could leave us even more out of pocket (circa £20k at recent guesstimate).

Help / advice gratefully received.

Cheers, Stu

see in red above

timmyt

Pee wrote: »

I think your solicitor made it "ok" by obtaining the indemnity insurance. You have voided that by going to the council. The question is did your solicitor explain the indemnity insurance properly to you, or not.

true but you brought the enemy in to the house....

timmyt

G_M wrote: »

EA is not reposible. H'e not a specialist in the area and it is up to buyers to check. That's why solicitors exist (well, one reason!).

Solicitor may be liable. What have you got in writing from them? What exactly did they tell you? If he told you all the necessary Planning/Building Regs approvals were in place (and preferably if he put it in writing) then you have a strong case against the solicitors. Otherwise, see Pee's post above!

I've never understood this indemnity insurance business. Yes, you're insured against enforcement by the council (unless you act to void the policy..!) but it doesn't guarantee the building work is safe! Or the cost of making it so. yes it does that is the point of the insurance

Building Regs are there for a purpose - to ensure extensions, conversions etc are not 'bodge jobs'. even with building regs, unless you have a completion certificate, and even then not a total confirmation of quality works All getting round the Bulding Regs achieves is.... bodge jobs.

see above.

indemnity insurance is a very practical way to get people in houses where there is no consequence. The industry makes millions on house policies where there is no signficinace to a lack of BRs

Thrugelmir

Read the sale particulars again very carefully. As possibly the EA has fallen foul..........

Essentially the Property Misdescriptions Act 1991 makes it an offence to make false or misleading statements about specified aspects of land (which includes buildings) offered for sale by those in estate agency or property development business. There is no general requirement to disclose information. But where information is given, it must be accurate and must not be misleading. The aspects of property (strictly matters relating to land) in respect of which misdescription is to be an offence are listed in the Order. The coverage of the list (copy attached) is broad, reflecting the fact that it is not a list of matters about which information must be given, but stipulates matters about which information must not be misleading.

http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file25449.pdf

timmyt

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Read the sale particulars again very carefully. As possibly the EA has fallen foul..........



http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file25449.pdf

too late once the lawyer got involved, and drew the lack of consents to your attention - did they not prepare a bound Proeprty Report for you, with copies of the EPC, plan of the proeprty, lease, searches etc......that is what you get from conveyancing lawyers to take away for your £500...the bible with a sign off at the end to say legally acceptable to proceed? No?

Thrugelmir

timmyt wrote: »

too late once the lawyer got involved, and drew the lack of consents to your attention - did they not prepare a bound Proeprty Report for you, with copies of the EPC, plan of the proeprty, lease, searches etc......that is what you get from conveyancing lawyers to take away for your £500...the bible with a sign off at the end to say legally acceptable to proceed? No?

Seems the decision to purchase then rests with the OP. A structural survey may been a good option at this juncture, once lack of planning consent became known.

hermum

Shouldn't the survey have picked up that it was unlikely to meet with building regs? A house my daughter was buying, the surveyer for the mortgage co advised that the loft conversion wouldn't comply & therefore she couldn't get the mortgage without a large retention. It wasn't a full structural survey.

PasturesNew

timmyt wrote: »

... did they not prepare a bound Proeprty Report for you, with copies of the EPC, plan of the proeprty, lease, searches etc......that is what you get from conveyancing lawyers to take away for your £500...the bible with a sign off at the end to say legally acceptable to proceed? No?

I've never heard of such a thing, nor ever seen one. Nor have I ever been aware of any poster on here referring to such a 'bound property report' and asking for advice. Maybe it's just your experience, or one set of solicitors, that provide this.

In my experience, most solicitors tell you nothing, say nothing - and assume you know all about what will happen, when, how, why. And, I think, those that do point out some things to people are using their own legal speak, which is interpreted differently by Mr/Mrs Buyer so they hear the words but don't apply the same meaning to them as the solicitor who is speaking them intends.

Hailstorm

hermum wrote: »

Shouldn't the survey have picked up that it was unlikely to meet with building regs? A house my daughter was buying, the surveyer for the mortgage co advised that the loft conversion wouldn't comply & therefore she couldn't get the mortgage without a large retention. It wasn't a full structural survey.

This is what I am thinking. If the council inspector spotted a problem within 2 minutes as the OP states, shouldn't the surveyor have highlighted a possible problem that required further invesitgation? If the survey was either a homebuyer's report or a full structural survey then it sounds like you may have a claim if the surveyor didn't pick up on it.

What sort of survey was it?

Unless you have documentary evidence that your solicitor didn't explain the indemnity insurance properly then I do not think you have a claim against them. Their job in this case would be to check if the required certificates are in place and to arrange indemnity cover if they are not and the buyer still wants to proceed.

<sebb>

PasturesNew wrote: »

I've never heard of such a thing, nor ever seen one. Nor have I ever been aware of any poster on here referring to such a 'bound property report' and asking for advice. Maybe it's just your experience, or one set of solicitors, that provide this.

In my experience, most solicitors tell you nothing, say nothing - and assume you know all about what will happen, when, how, why. And, I think, those that do point out some things to people are using their own legal speak, which is interpreted differently by Mr/Mrs Buyer so they hear the words but don't apply the same meaning to them as the solicitor who is speaking them intends.

My solicitor has provided a full property report and has explained everything to me fully in plain English. She was recommended to me by a friend who had a bad experience with a previous solicitor who she said used a lot of legal speak, refused to communicate by phone or email and charged £35 for each letter he sent her everytime she asked a basic question. I guess it depends on which solicitor you use.