Advice needed: Looking to buy but no building regs..

RedwoodBrook

I am just after some advice from those who have any experience or legal knowledge of the situation.

I am looking at buying a house that has no building regs for the loft conversion or extension to the rear of the property. Planning permission exists and is fine but as the house was repossessed from the previous owners, apparently no trace can be found of the building regs certificate. It may be that is exists, but conversely it may be that it doesn't.

The agent informed us that the previous sale (at £15,000 more than I would be willing to offer) fell through after the buyers pulled out because of these building regs, or rather the lack of them. Whether or not their mortgage lender was the problem I do not know. From research I have done it appears lenders generally stay clear of these sorts of properties? I am aware of indemnity insurance and have been told the seller offered a policy to the previous buyers.

I have only viewed the house once so can not be sure although it certainly looks like the extensions have been there sometime and are not a particularly new addition.

I am just wondering how much of a problem these lack of building regs will pose, and what the potential implications are. The house is more than large enough to accommodate my current growing family (and any who appear in the future) so it would be a long term family home. I am a cash buyer.

Any help or clarification would be appreciated.

Thanks

Doozergirl

If the extensions have had the opportunity to stand the test of time and therefore giving your surveyor the chance to look at what has happened over time, and your surveyor is happy about the safety of the structure and it's integrity then the lack of building regulations approval is a formality. The previous buyers have pulled out because they're of the jittery variety. Fact is that many houses that have had extensions attached without certificate, would never have been tested themselves even when they were built. That isn't a problem at all though!

Mortgage companies will accept the indemnity policy in place of a completion certificate. When you come to sell, even more time will have passed and there will be an indemnity in place, so it will be even less of an issue.

Can of coke exploded over my laptop and the keys have gone sticky :wall:

RedwoodBrook

Thanks for your reply.

From what I have read so far, it certainly appears that the previous buyers were the problem rather than the lack of building regs. I am trying to keep a level head as it is my dream house and I do not want to be influenced by that. I can afford to buy this house once, but not another is things go pear-shaped.

If I felt compelled to obtain a building regs certificate after I purchased the property, is this a fairly simple process? Presuming the extensions are all above board of course.

Doozergirl

It probably isn't worth the hassle. If there have been no inspections then they will have you stripping plaster off the walls and digging holes in the garden.

Regs from when the extension was built will have moved on and so it won't meet current regs, so you'd be trying to get it approved to regs that don't apply any more anyway. As soon as you contact Building Control regarding the extension you void the policy and that is when you land yourself in hot water. You have no choice but to get it to comply. Safe and compliant may be two different things in the case of the extension. I wouldn't bother. The indemnity will be in place, the surveyor is happy, to do any more is to open a can of worms. Just make sure that anything you do as you go forward is compliant. Then it all starts to override the original work anyway and suddenly you have certificates.

It is so common. We have this question once a day, if not more. I was answering exactly the same question last night.

tyllwyd

Assuming the extension was built at around the time planning permission was granted, how long ago do you think that was?

sonastin

Just a note of warning on the indemnity insurance - if it is a repossession, the mortgagee will most likely have contacted the council to ask for copies of the BR certs so an indemnity policy may already be void.

I had exactly the same scenario - purchasing a repo, asked for copies of the BR certs for loft conversion and garage extension, stirred up a hornets nest with building control when it turned out that it wasn't signed off - or even approved in the case of the garage. The mortgagee messed around for several months trying to get them signed off before they finally relented and discounted the property enough for us to take on the work. Since we've started uncovering the work, it is a whole lot worse than our surveyor picked up on the Homebuyer's survey. I'm not sure if a full building survey would have picked up the extent of the trouble but having said that, we knew there were significant problems already so planned for the worst. We've submitted planning applications to redo it all in a different way anyway.

I'd get a surveyor to do a full and thorough survey of the property. If there are any indications that the work is substandard, plan for there to be a lot more work needed when you can start uncovering the mess that they made. If the surveyor thinks that things look fine, you might be alright with the lack of building regs but there's often a reason why the work wasn't signed off.

Oh, and our original work was done in about 2005-7 - 4 years later it looked to my untrained eye as being fine so make sure that the surveyor gets properly stuck in...

Yorkie1

One thing I've picked up on here with regard to loft conversions is to be very careful if there is no B Regs approval. If I recall correctly, it's related firstly to the fact that the joists in the loft are rarely designed to be weight-bearing to the extent of it being a habitable room, thus requiring the joists to be strengthened - or potential problems if this hasn't been done.

There are also insulation and head height issues if I remember rightly. And also fire escape / fire doors / fixed staircase issues. Loft conversions are higher risk to structure and safety if they have had short cuts taken.

RedwoodBrook

Thank you for all the replies.

With regards to when the work was carried out, I have no idea! The kitchen units look to be very new so I am assuming the work has been carried out in the last 5 years. The loft conversion however could well be older. The staircase leading to the loft certainly looks like it has been there a while, and could almost be an original feature of the house given that it isn't out of place at all. This is something we need to investigate further.

Sonastin - Do you mean the previous owners lender, ie. the bank/building society who currently own the property will have asked the council for copies of the BR's? As far as I have gathered from the agent, this bank offered an indemnity policy with the last sale of the house (that subsequently fell through) so surely they wouldnt have been able to do this if they had contacted the council?

The house is a semi and the other half sold for £168k last November. This half is currently on the market for £135k. The agent has told us the previous sale was for £150k although this fell through.
Could this reduction be due to the costs involved of bringing the modifications to to scratch or is it pretty standard for a bank to want to shift a repo'd property even at a hefty reduction?

I am still fairly new to this game so forgive any daft questions/comments.

Doozergirl

It would be about the condition of the building, not really the lack of BR. Yes they sometimes reduce repossessions quite heavily. The fact they've lost a buyer because of it helps you get it for a lower price because the lender can't do anything to fix it, so they drop the price.

Have you had a full survey or a littler one? Full surveys are important on repos because the lenders can't answer any questions with knowledge so you usually end up with a list of answers that reads 'not known'.

sonastin

RedwoodBrook wrote: »

Sonastin - Do you mean the previous owners lender, ie. the bank/building society who currently own the property will have asked the council for copies of the BR's? As far as I have gathered from the agent, this bank offered an indemnity policy with the last sale of the house (that subsequently fell through) so surely they wouldnt have been able to do this if they had contacted the council?

In my case, the local search showed planning applications for house extension, loft conversion and garage extension. The Building regs bit of the search showed approved applications for BR for the house extension and loft conversion and a refusal for the BR application for the garage extension. As part of his enquiries, my solicitor requested copies of the final BR certs - as a good solicitor should. Because the vendors were the lender rather than the previous owner, they didn't have the certs so asked the council for copies. The council provided a copy of the cert for the extension but said that the loft and garage hadn't been signed off. The message came back from my solicitor "they were going to offer an indemnity policy but that won't work because they've already spoken to the council so they are going to get it regularised instead". I don't know if it was the vendor's solicitor who made and then retracted the offer or if they offered and my solicitor told them where to stick it. It took them many months to realise that regularisation was going to involve actually putting things right which first meant uncovering the things that might have been (and were) done wrong.

In your case, the lender's solicitors might already be aware for whatever reason (e.g. the previous owners told them?!) that the building regs weren't signed off so they haven't had any need to contact the council and an indemnity policy might be OK.

Or they might not realise or might be hoping that you don't realise that contact with the council will invalidate the policy and once the sale is completed, its not their problem anyway. Before you accept the offer of an indemnity policy, you should ask whether they have spoken to the council so you know what you're letting yourself in for.

RedwoodBrook

sonastin wrote: »

In my case, the local search showed planning applications for house extension, loft conversion and garage extension. The Building regs bit of the search showed approved applications for BR for the house extension and loft conversion and a refusal for the BR application for the garage extension. As part of his enquiries, my solicitor requested copies of the final BR certs - as a good solicitor should. Because the vendors were the lender rather than the previous owner, they didn't have the certs so asked the council for copies. The council provided a copy of the cert for the extension but said that the loft and garage hadn't been signed off. The message came back from my solicitor "they were going to offer an indemnity policy but that won't work because they've already spoken to the council so they are going to get it regularised instead". I don't know if it was the vendor's solicitor who made and then retracted the offer or if they offered and my solicitor told them where to stick it. It took them many months to realise that regularisation was going to involve actually putting things right which first meant uncovering the things that might have been (and were) done wrong.

In your case, the lender's solicitors might already be aware for whatever reason (e.g. the previous owners told them?!) that the building regs weren't signed off so they haven't had any need to contact the council and an indemnity policy might be OK.

Or they might not realise or might be hoping that you don't realise that contact with the council will invalidate the policy and once the sale is completed, its not their problem anyway. Before you accept the offer of an indemnity policy, you should ask whether they have spoken to the council so you know what you're letting yourself in for.

Excellent, thank you. I have been making notes of all the advice posted on here. A relative (who is helping financially) is viewing the house today and fortunatly for me they know much more about buying, and cash buying, than I do.