Selling a PRC house

Victorious1

We bought a repaired pre-cast reinforced concrete (PRC) house in 2006, with a mortgage from Abbey. The property was bought under Right to Buy in 1995, then subsequently sold in 2001, 2004 and then to us in 2006. It is understood the repairs were carried out in the late 1980s, along with the whole street.

The survey undertaken identified that the property was a rebuilt PRC, but did identify under the legal issues section that "The conveyancer should obtain confirmation that these works were completed to the full satisfaction of the Local Authority Planning and Building Control Departments." It did not specify that the provision of a PRC repair certificate was a condition of the mortgage. The conveyancer did not request this certificate (I don't believe the previous occupiers would have had it).

We completed without this PRC certificate and have been living happily in the house for 5 years. We have, however, recently put the house of the market, but were informed by the estate agent that they have been having problems with a sale of a similar property a few doors down where the seller's mortgage company (Abbey again) had requested an PRC repair certificate. It appears that this is now commonplace with lenders.

I am looking to pre-empt this issue on our house by trying to find a copy of the certificate. The Council have informed me that they don't have the certificates but may be able to write a letter saying that they were aware of the repair work and consider it to be satisfactory. I'm struggling to determine who will write this letter though - housing have informed me that legal services will do this, but I am waiting to here back from them.

Does anyone have experience of this? Will a mortgage provider accept a letter from a Council as evidence rather than a certificate? If not, it sounds like we are not going to be able to find a seller and may have to pay a surveyor in excess of £1.5k to issue us with a new certificate. This seems excessive given that the property has changed hands so many times since the work was carried out without this certificate.

anna**_4

Hello,

I was looking for this kind e-mail very long! we are just in process of buying a house and we found out that our is a PRC but repaired house.
Abbey is asking for this Cert but our Council doesn't have any so they sent all paperwork what they had to our Solicitors so they can send them to Abbey. In our offer was written that if Abbey won't be happy with the provided paperwork they may send an engineering to check the hause, which i believe will delay everything!
We aimed to move on 24th, in 4 days, and now i see it may not happen!
I'll keep posted how this situation will end.

Has anybody got similar situation?
Anna

ILW

Why buy a house that you will probably never be able to sell?

Richard_Webster

I think each lender that is prepared to consider repaired PRC houses has slightly different criteria as to certificates etc that they require.

This makes it very difficult for people to know where they stand.

anna**_4

We wanted to buy this hause as it was a love from the 1st sight... this was sth that we were looking for a long time.
The hause is being sold by the builder so it's finished and maintained properly. and because it was repaired 20 years ago so we really can say it's 20 years old
I know that the government works on making this problem less difficult for the future (simplify the approvals, searches etc) for PRC houses, so ILW, we all don't know what the situation will be in the next 20 years time, at the moment there is nothing wrong with this house, it's just the mortgage company trying to approve everything. On the other hand we will be assured that the house was being done properly! However it takes time, we supposed to get an answer today, and no answer was given...