Help deciding if we should buy or walk away please

maite_2

Hi All,

Apologies in advance for the long post but really hope someone can help as we are in a bit of a dilemma and we can’t decide which way to go.

We put an offer in a property in January. It is a 1960’s-1970’s modernist townhouse built on soil clay in a conservation area. At the rear of the property the ground slopes away and has direct access to a very large pond maintained by the council. There are several mature trees in the rear garden both in this property and the adjoining properties, with the roots at lower levels than the buildings ground floor slab.

First all seemed to go well and the mortgage valuer approved the mortgage very quickly (not sure if the fact we have a large deposit would have helped as the bank would not be taking too much risk) but he was in and out of the property in a matter of minutes.
We instructed a building survey and it came to light the vendors built a bedroom and an en-suite at the original integral garage without getting building control approval. The gas & electric meters and the water stopcock are still inside this “bedroom”. Is this acceptable? The vendors put on the solicitors form they did this conversion in 1975 but when asked to show the invoices they changed their dates and said the previous owners had done it prior to them purchasing the property in 1973. Also the agents were fully aware of this but advertised the property as having an extra bedroom and bathroom.

The vendors didn’t mention they had done any building works on the solicitor’s property questionnaire but they have finally admitted they built the ground floor rear extension 15 years ago without building control and planning permission. The extension is only a 2’ extension which runs along the back of the house but the building surveyor noticed it had some vertical cracking. The main structure of the house seems ok though. We got an structural engineer to check this again and he said we needed to see documents from the vendors with information about what type of foundation the house has or otherwise a trial excavation pit must be done. Apparently this costs only £100-£300 but the vendors are declining to pay for this or to give permission to do it.

The vendor has suggested instead that we meet at the property with my engineer and one of the original architects that was involved in building the house as he still lives in one of the neighbouring houses. They would show us original plans but we could not check the foundations and the back extension.

A new house was also built next door in 2006 as ours was the original end of terrace in a row of houses. This house needed to have pile foundations, the council advised.

The engineer is also worried we might have difficulty getting insurance and I am concerned that if there was subsidence in this “illegal” rear extension the insurance company might not pay out. The agents also said the council can’t enforce building regulations on this extension as it’s 15 years old but an indemnity insurance would not work as the council are already aware of it as the surveyor contacted them.

Even with all this information, my husband would be inclined to continue with our purchase it if they vendors regularise this extension or with a reduction in price accordingly. I think the vendors would never agree to a reduction as they don’t even want to pay for the trial pit excavation and that taking on this project is very risky. I would be inclined to pull out and try to find a property with less future headaches. We’ve been looking for long as there is a lot of competition in our area due to good schools. There are not many medium sized houses as the majority are unaffordable so we were very happy initially to have found this.

Would any one be kind enough to share their views with us? Would you walk away or compromise?

Many thanks!

david29dpo

I would walk.

Meadows

All sounds a bit suspicious to me and if the sellers are not forthcoming with information then what have they got to hide?

moneyistooshorttomention

I understand the difficulties in finding a property in just the right location - but I would think that there will be a few more on the market over coming weeks - with Easter coming up.

I'd walk.

The main thing that would bother me would be that they had lied about the extension ("Oh we did it this date - whoops no...they did at that date") and that would make me feel very wary of trusting them on anything else.

yoyoegg

Yep, refusal to let you investigate would be me trigger to walk away.

richardw

It's less than 3 weeks to Easter, they'll be more properties arriving on the market, I'd pause and keep looking.

Mickygg

I would Walk!

neas

You've caught them out lying maybe 3 times with dates of extension/conversion:

1975/1973/1997..

Most likely if it wasn't done with building/planning might not have got the proper foundations. Further properties go back more likely they don't conform to newer ideals about foundations e.g. 100 year old house won't have much foundations at all as it wasn't the standard then.

I'd walk, if you have doubts about a house at all then its not meant to be.

cattie

Another one here who would walk away. If you have a vendor who isn't willing to shell out between £100-£300 for the foundation survey, then that is suspicious to my mind.

In this day and age, even in London which still has a reasonably healthy property market, vendors tend to be very keen to do all they can to secure a sale. This couple, for some reason, have no inclination to try to secure you as buyers with just a small financial outlay on their side & that coupled with the lies regarding dates etc. they have given really does make it look as if they have something to hide.

namecheck

I would walk, too. Too many potential problems.

Waterlily24

I'd walk too!