Who is to blame? Me/Surveyor/Solicitor

Philkm

JQ. wrote: »

I agree it does'nt look too odd, until you realise the houses are on a slope & the OP's house is higher than the other, in which case it looks far more obvious. I guess it depends what it's like on the inside. It will also depend on what the building regs were like in the 1970's, when the house was presumably built. Would such upstairs rooms have been legal back then and so would it be reasonable to expect bedrooms up there. Or would they have been against building regs back then, in which case the surveyor should have picked up the issue.

I don't know the answers to any of the above, but they are questions the OP needs to ask when the Surveyor/Valuer inspects.

In 1970 (in fact up to 1976) you needed a minimum of 2.34m head room to call it a habitable space. Apparently nowadays you could in theory have a 2ft ceiling as there is no restriction. The surveyor the other day pointed this out as soon as he went upstairs and saw the restricted head height. as such he said a surveyor should have worked out it was converted whereas a dumbass lay person such as me wouldn't.

Philkm

jenny74 wrote: »

At a first glance the upstairs window doesn't look too out of place - in nthe respect that it lines up with the house it adjoins to.

But on further inspection, the downstairs windows don't link up with the next door house, which makes the upstairs and downstairs windows closer together, and out of sorts, IYSWIM? The house IMHO looks odd... it's just doesn't look right.

What do others think?

Jenny

Jenny, remember you are looking with the knowledge it has been converted where as I wasn't even thinking about it.

milliebear00001

I can't see how the upstairs works at all! Where are the four beds? How restricted is that head height?

blackshirtuk

How come it was a semi-detached bungalow attached to a 2 storey house? Very odd design imo!

SUESMITH_2

it does look odd because of the downstairs windows not lining up and the roof line - although in the 70s such things were fashionable. how on earth have did they get rooms up there, and just how limited is the headroom?

when we bought the house we're in now we knew it needed lots of work as my dad was a builder and he had given it the once over, however we still paid for a structural survey just in case we had missed anything - as it turned out we hadn't but we regarded it as money well spent.

frank.hopper

Philkm wrote: »

,

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.

House pic


I assume you mean a 2 bedroomed semi bungalow? I think the property on the left was extended first, given that roof line.

Philkm

frank.hopper wrote: »

House pic


I assume you mean a 2 bedroomed semi bungalow? I think the property on the left was extended first, given that roof line.

No, the roof line hasn't been altered at all. The house on the left is as it was built. The roof is a saltbox design and matches many others on the estate including the one I was brought up in. the majority of the properties are split level detatched houses using this roof line.

neas

I think you've been sold a pup....

Arthritic_Toe

Lots of faith on here about full structural suryeys. I had the full structural survey which completely missed a major dry rot outbreak. However the survey report is so full of caveats that more or less worthless. I may as well have had the cheap valuation.