Help - indemnity insurance - why?

papermoney

Thanks - that's really useful. We have one full height wall so i'm not sure if it would be excempt - ah well, we'll wait and see.

lotto-dreamer

Before you do anything else, speak to your solicitor first.

When your solicitors wrote to you requesting money for indemnity insurance you should have been made aware of the nature of indemnity insurance and implications as well as sending you a draft policy so you could see what it entails. If you agree to pay for it then a draft is also sent to purchasers solictors for their approval.

If your husband did not give actual property address in email - you might be ok from that point of view.

Best of luck!

(You shoudn't have to find money now if you do end up paying for the indemnity insurance - it will be shown on your completion statement and will come out of your sale proceeds. However, if you have a related purchase you will have to add that when balance completion monies are requested)

Richard_Webster

Most conservatories are exempt from having to comply with the building regulations, but there are exceptions. I think you need to ask your solicitor why yours is not exempt.

You haven't removed a door between the main part of the house and the conservatory have you?

Under planning law a small conservatory will often be "permitted development" not requiring permission. If it falls outside these tolerances in terms of size or for other reasons, if it has been up 4 years, subject to what I say in the next paragraph, it is too late for enforcement.

Sometimes the local authority take away the "permitted development" allowance when giving permission for the houses in the first place and this means that building a conservatory is a breach of a planning condition which only becomes immune after 10 years! Again, ask your solicitor to explain precisely why in your case planning permission is thought to be required.

The reason behind a lot of indemnity policies is that conveyancing solicitors are scared of being sued by the mortgage lenders, who want all risks to their security protected against.

If I am acting for an individual buyer client I can explain some small risk factor and the client may well say he agrees it is very unlikely that anything adverse will happen and he is prpeared to take the risk. I CAN'T HAVE THAT KIND OF CONVERSATION WITH A LENDER - they don't have staff I can talk to who can make decisions about that kind of thing - they have a rule book which we have to follow and so solicitors end up having to get everything squeaky clean.

It might be in your case that when you bought, your solicitor thought the risks were so small as not to be worth while having a policy - he might have been right! Trouble is that now someone else is asking! Some of my time is spent telling buyer clients not just about real problems but about points that another solicitor could raise when they sell!

As a conveyancing solicitor I believe the information given in the post to be useful but I accept no liability except to fee-paying client