Indemnity Insurance

Rapide_2 · 17 March 2007 at 2:57PM

The garage to our bungalow was converted to two bedrooms about 10 years ago. I understanding planning permission was not required. However, building regulations were not applied for. How much of a problem is this likely to be in the event of our selling? Would an indemnity insurance solve the problem? Would building regulations still be required after this time lapse?

Mrs_Arkwright · 17 March 2007 at 4:48PM

We have sold our house, which has an extension that has no planning permission or building regs. We don't know how old it is, but we've been here ten years and it was here when we bought the house. Even though this amount of time has elapsed, we have still been forced to take out indemnity insurance in respect of the building regulations, because our buyer's lender insisted on it, even though all relevant time limits have now passed for any action that could be taken.

MarkyMarkD · 17 March 2007 at 7:04PM

When we were buying our house, the solicitor insisted on getting permission from the developers for the construction of the extension which was added to the house in 1991 - we bought in 1997 and the house was originally built in 1983.

The original developers had ceased trading and been taken over by someone else, and evidently didn't give a stuff, but the vendors still had to go through the hassle of paying their successors a fee to authorise the extension retrospectively.

silvercar · 17 March 2007 at 8:23PM

we bought a house with the garage converted to a room, many years ago. Our solicitor pointed out that it didn't have building regs but there was nothing anyone would do about it. He said that it wasn't worth getting an indemnity put in place as the conversion had been done so long ago.