Who is to blame? Me/Surveyor/Solicitor

Philkm

Hi,

I hope someone can help me. I purchased a 4 bedroom semi detatched house nearly 3 years ago. The design is individual and there are no similar ones on the estate or indeed any that I can find on the net.

I have now discovered that it is in fact a 2 bedroomed bungalow which was 'converted' to have a staircase and 2 upstairs rooms. This conversion was not done to standard and my upstairs bedrooms are sitting on ceiling joists with a bit of 4x2 on top. No plannning permission was sought as it didnt go through the roof in to a dormer or anything similar but also building control was not informed as it should have been. The conversion was done not by the owner previous to me but somebody a few down the line.

Who is to blame here?

Is it me ( because I didnt pay for a full structural survey, i just wanted the basics i.e. is it a house??)

Is it the surveyor - he has said the house has 2 floors, 4 bedrooms and has not been converted. We have the copy but we paid for the bank to have it done so did we enter into a contract with him???

Is it the solicitor who did the conveyancing and failed to spot a bungalow turning into a house.

If I have to rip the house apart and spend a lot of my own money increasing the size of the joists it will make the upstairs unworkable as the ceiling height will be insufficient. You can work out the maths on the difference in value between a 4 bed house and a 2 bed bungalow!!

Richard_Webster

Was your survey a home buyers report or full building survey or just a basic valuation that the bank did for mortgage purposes? if the last then your chances of success are virtually nil.

If the others then it is a question of whether a surveyor would be negligent -in not spotting it and it might cost you something to get an=other surveyor to give you an expert opinion on whether or not there were signs that should have been spotted.

I don't know why a solicitor would have known. We deal in purchases of land that may happen to have a building on it. We have no reason to investigate what a building looked like in the past unless there is something to cause us to suspect something wrong.

Conveyancing documents don't necessarily make any distinction between houses and bungalows and modern Land Registry transfers simply refer to title numbers. Uunless there was an unregistered conveyance that specifically has wording like "all that land shown edged red on the plan annexed hereto together with the bungalow erected thereon" (as opposed to the then more common "messuage or dwellinghouse") it is unlikely there would be any reason why the solicitor would have any reason to suppose there was a problem.

Is there something you think the solicitor should have checked?

Also you have to consider what damage or loss you have actually suffered. The work must have been carried out some yaers ago. Although the work appears substandard has there actually been any problem (i.e. damage to the structure) arising from that? I say that because there are thousands of older houses with construction standards that would be considered very substandard now but are still standing and the owners don't seem too worried about them.

Philkm

Thanks Richard.

The 'survey' was a valuation for mortgage purposes. I felt confident enough to not ask for any more as I know the area and the houses on this estate well and knew I would want to do some work on the rooms anyway.

I had a surveyor round this morning who as soon as he walked upstairs pointed out that the house had to have been conveted as it wouldn't have been approved at the time of construction due the ceiling height (it is restricted and slopes). He didnt not feel the floor was solid enough - there was quite a bit of 'bounce' in the floor.

The original 'valuation report' has the year of construction, says it has NOT been converted and has 2 habitable floors, 4 bedrooms etc.

Richard_Webster

Still a bit of a struggle to make a surveyor liable for a report given for the benefit of the lender and not for your benefit.

I take it that you don't feel there is anything that your solicitor should have checked.

thistledome

Philkm wrote: »

Thanks Richard.

I had a surveyor round this morning who as soon as he walked upstairs pointed out that the house had to have been conveted as it wouldn't have been approved at the time of construction due the ceiling height (it is restricted and slopes). He didnt not feel the floor was solid enough - there was quite a bit of 'bounce' in the floor.

The original 'valuation report' has the year of construction, says it has NOT been converted and has 2 habitable floors, 4 bedrooms etc.

Might be a good idea to ask this morning's Surveyor if you could have a case against the valuation Surveyor.

A mortgage valuation pretty much just lets the lender know the house is worth enough for them to lend on it and not lose their money if you default. But if your house is structurally unsafe or illegal, then that has a bearing on the value. I think a good Surveyor would mention this in the valuation, even if it's only to tell the interested parties that they should get a proper survey done.

The terms "habitable floors" and "unconverted" in valuations are standard terms, they don't depend on condition IIRC. Converted or unconverted in one of these valuations generally pertains to houses converted into flats. (It's a long time since I worked in a Surveyors office so I could be corrected here, though!).

Good luck anyway.

Philkm

I don't know Richard.

All I know is I bought a '4 bedroomed house' in good faith and paid for a report and for the conveyancing only to now be told that isn't what I bought.

I am meeting the solicitors next week, a different solicitor next week for their advice and I'm meeting the bank next week for their view ( they've lent money for a 4 bedroom that doesn't exist too!)

I'm looking best scenario at having to pull all the floors up and have steel work inserted to strengthen the floor but if I have to have taller joists put I will lose headroom which I don't have to spare which will make the upstairs pretty unusable......unless you know a family of hobbits wanting a nice new home????

GDB2222

Phil, what makes you think that you need to do anything at all to strengthen the floors? Did the surveyor say that they were dangerous? The point is that most people want houses that are far stronger than strictly necessary. they don't want bouncy floors, even though there is no danger at all of the floors collapsing. I am not sure about fire protection, but possibly an extra layer of plasterboard on the downstairs ceilings would be a good idea if you are doing work anyway. possibly you could lay extra joists parallel with the existing ones. have you discussed that sort of option with your surveyor? you really need a practical solution here.

G_M

Philkm wrote: »

I felt confident enough to not ask for any more as I know the area and the houses on this estate well and knew I would want to do some work on the rooms anyway.

Sounds like mis-placed confidence.

The surveyor was employed by the mortgage-lender, not you, specifically to value the property, not to report on it's condition and/or existence of building regs etc.

The solicitor probobly never saw the property and as richard has explained had no reason to check Building regs etc (unless you asked him/her to?)

The fact that "The design is individual and there are no similar ones on the estate" might have rung warning bells about a design change and suggested a survey would have been advisable.

henpecked1

ask a silly question, does the property not look like a bungalow that has been converted?

JQ.

Did you get the surveyor who came round this morning to provide you with a valuation and an indication of what it would have been worth in this condition when you bought it. I would think this is your first course of action, as if you've not suffered any actual loss there's no point paying expensive solicitors fees as there will be no claim.

It does sound pretty obvious that it was a conversion, just from your description, but I'm not sure how much liability the Surveyor will have to you when they've only done a mortgage survey.

ps - the bank won't care. They'll only get involved if you default on your mortgage payments.

Good luck with it all.

blackshirtuk

Could you possibly put beams across the ceilings of the downstairs rooms instead? may be more wiggle room on ceiling height downstairs.

you could then either make a feature of them , box them or drop the ceilings to hide them.