Property mis-sold under property misdescription act

arcon5

By the way op, if you do have a valid claim against the solicitor then you would be required to mitigate your losses - the cost of obtaining a certificate is likely to be by far lessor than the loss of value, so you may have to go down this route anyway.

The solicitor should have professional indemnity insurance so worth checking.

If my current estate agents say they can't sell the property as three bedrooms as they could get sued under the property misdescription act then surely all the estate agwnts have to follow the same rules and regulations?

Yes, but clearly not all do.

The problem is the last estate agent is likely to be guilty of professional negligence and not misreperesentation - if you go eslewhere and claim it to be 3 bedroom then you would be mis-representing the property and potentially guilty of a criminal offense.

bod1467

And you still haven't provided answers the questions others have asked.

shocky_2

It shouldn't be too hard to get a final completion certificate, surely?

Lala1971

Sorry I thought I had answered all the questions, the conversion has been checked by the council and unfortunately the original plans submitted and approved have not been followed so there is a lot of work to do upstairs and that's without even further investigative work plus the whole ofthe downstairs has been opened up and in the original plans that was two separate rooms and a hallway so that too would need to be put back to the original plans this is why I suspect it is going to cost about twenty grand to put right. I have been on the phone to many people over the past few days and they all seem to be sending me back to the property ombudsman and the legal ombudsman so it looks lke this is the route we will need to take hope this covers it all and thanks for comments thus far

Yorkie1

This should really be on the House Buying forum as mentioned above. Try asking the board guides to move it.

However, in the meantime...

You need to go back to your original survey and purchase documents from when you bought the property. The solicitor has not seen the property and can only go on what was told to him.

(Assuming you are in England / Wales?).

1. What did your survey say about the loft conversion and any other work?

2. Did it recommend that your solictor get the B Regs and completion documents etc sorted out?

3. Did you ask your solicitor about the completion documents? If so, what did they write to you?

4. If you didn't get a response from your questions to the solicitor, did you chase this up?

5. The sellers will probably have had to complete a form in which a question was asked about whether any work had been done to the property. What did their answer say?

unholyangel

Lala1971 wrote: »

Sorry I thought I had answered all the questions, the conversion has been checked by the council and unfortunately the original plans submitted and approved have not been followed so there is a lot of work to do upstairs and that's without even further investigative work plus the whole ofthe downstairs has been opened up and in the original plans that was two separate rooms and a hallway so that too would need to be put back to the original plans this is why I suspect it is going to cost about twenty grand to put right. I have been on the phone to many people over the past few days and they all seem to be sending me back to the property ombudsman and the legal ombudsman so it looks lke this is the route we will need to take hope this covers it all and thanks for comments thus far

Did the council tell you the house wouldnt be accepted as it is - if you had new plans drawn up based on the house as it is and submitted those?

Remember that pretty much in any situation you're expected to mitigate any loss you incur. If the council would accept new plans drawn up to how the property is atm, it could be seen as mitigation as your loss would then be whatever fee's you had to pay instead of £20k on sale price.

However I should point out that in order to have a decent case against them, you should get several evaluations. Some estate agents will add slightly more to the price (perhaps as a tactic to encourage the customer to use them) where others will undervalue the house in order to get a quick sale. Even if you get 3 different evaluations from 3 different reputable firms......the chances of them all being the same are limited. Depending on the price of your house, £20k variation between evaluations wouldnt be unusual (probably over 200k a 20k variation would be extremely common, if your house is valued at 50k currently, then given the 20k would be a 40% difference....i can understand why you'd be worried). One company in particular here were notorious for undervaluing by around 50% in the majority of their sales. A home which other agents were valuing at £68k-80k....this firm valued at £35k (although this was 15 years ago - they've changed now obviously).

Also the Estate Agents usually only give a "recommended" sell price and it is up to the sellers what they actually want to advertise it at .

Optimist

It seems to me that you probably have a case of misrepresentation against the previous owners for failing to put this information on the property information form.

Obviously if they did mention the building works then its your conveyancing solicitor you need to be going after.

The first thing to do is see your solicitor.

Evilm

When did you buy the house? I can't see you've mentioned that at all?

sunflower_2

can u not sell it via the same estate agent you purchased through?

am pretty sure if you explained the situation they would be more than willing to take the same chance they took previously - rather than risk any action from being taken against them?

for what it is worth - one of my prev properties had 2 beds upstairs and one down (converted cottage with dormers added).
it was advertised as a 2/3 bed property and came up when anyone searched for either a 2 bed or a 3.
the price reflected it being a 3 bedroom.

Lala1971

Thank you for all your responses so far. We bought the house seven years ago. The council has now supplied us with a long list of things we need to do to get the conversion to conform to original plans for sign off not sure now whether we need to pay a surveyor to come in and check all over to see exactly what has and hasn't been done as the list includes things like check the support beams or whether we can just get a builder in todo this to save the expense of a surveyor or whether to just sell as is and give info to buyers so they can do the work if they want the council have confirmed that they will not be taking the matter further and enforcing any work so that's one positive any thoughts?