Grade 2 Listed - Retrospective planning - help needed

Fire_Fox

DiscoCat54 wrote: »

Firefox, I see your point around how it can be a dream home with these issues but in this case it's an emotional response based on aesthetics, size and position. She has basically fallen in love with it, faults and all!

Will she still love it when she has to pay specialist tradesmen to put everything back as it was? Because that really is what the listed buildings officer can insist on and rightly so, a piece of history has been damaged.

Ed2000

There is no 4-year exemption for listed buildings.

If I were the potential buyer I would file a planning complaint and await the outcome of the enforcement action.

Bit rough I know, but that's business.

phoebe1989seb

When we were moving last year we had an offer accepted on a Grade 2 listed house which was in need of major work and had bags of potential. We thought the price was fairly realistic and reflected the amount of work required but we were concerned that some work carried out by the current owners had not been done with LBC, including a half-finished extension that had been abandoned several years previously. We attempted to talk to the conservation officer regarding our concerns but they failed to respond to our calls.

In the end we pulled out of the purchase for different reasons (and bought a non-listed 200+ year old character house ), but subsequently the house remained on the market a further 15 months before it eventually sold for £182k (having even failed to sell at auction) - it was on originally for £400k! We believe we had a lucky escape. To my mind, whilst I adore character properties - and have never lived in anything else - I would be incredibly wary of taking on a listed house with these issues DiscoCat and have to agree with the other posters that your sister will, I'm sure find another, less problematic dream house........GL to her