House sale - planning permissions

tiggerkid

Hi everyone,

I have a new question regarding planning permissions. We've just received a letter from our solicitor stating that our buyers want planning permissions dating back to 1997. We only moved into our house in 2005 and there have been no alterations to the property other than the fact that we added conservatory. The property was built around 1997 and planning permission dating back to 1997 and all others that they are asking for are basically covering the construction of the entire estate!

I've already seen one of the planning permissions they are asking for and it says it covers construction of over 150 dwellings on our estate. They want to see planning permissions for all houses on the estate! Our solicitor said that we will have to pay extra not only to obtain those planning permissions but also for her to correspond with the buyers' solicitors on this matter.

Our EA says it's not unreasonable for buyers to ask for planning permissions for a house less than 20 years old. I told him that I wouldn't have an issue with it if they were asking for a planning permission just for our house but because the house was constructed by a major housebuilder, their planning permissions aren't for individual houses. They basically, as I said, cover construction of our entire estate and I am not willing to pay for it.

The buyers are threatening to pull out because we aren't willing to do this.

Grateful if you could share your experiences/thoughts?

Many thanks.

onlyroz

Most planning permission information should be listed on the website of the local authority, available for free.

anselld

They can just go down to the Council planning office and view any applications they like. If they want to pull out over that then they are probably nightmare buyers anyway.

tiggerkid

onlyroz wrote: »

Most planning permission information should be listed on the website of the local authority, available for free.

Thank you but, unfortunately, in this case they are not. That's why the solicitors are saying we will have to pay extra for her to attempt to obtain these as well as for her to correspond with the buyers' solicitors on this topic!

Yorkie1

tiggerkid wrote: »

Thank you but, unfortunately, in this case they are not. That's why the solicitors are saying we will have to pay extra for her to attempt to obtain these as well as for her to correspond with the buyers' solicitors on this topic!

Is this a high-street solicitors' firm?

Did you not get a fixed price quote?

de_g.

What are they hoping to achieve?

Which local authority are you in? Almost all have application details going back to at least the 90s available to view online.

If it is a big estate, the chances are there was an original outline permission dealing with the in principle issues, followed by a series of reserved matters applications where details were approved, and probably even more applications for the authority to confirm compliance with conditions. I'd perhaps suggest a compromise - that you'll find applications related to yours and immediately adjacent properties. You'll probably find that is covered by one outline application, one or two reserved matters applications and the odd householder application (conservatories, extensions etc).

(Although - shouldn't it be the responsibility of the purchaser to get these as part of their searches?)

Fuzzyness

even if the original planning permission was for 150 houses, it is still only a single permission that covers all 150 houses, not a 150 seperate permissions. the original applicaiton would have contained planns for all the different houses that they were applying for but this would still have been bundled up a single submission. find the planning permission for whole development and tell yours/their solicitor to stop being so ducking thick.

hamster2013

Yorkie1 wrote: »

Is this a high-street solicitors' firm?

Did you not get a fixed price quote?

probably an online convayancing firm - those that do the no sale no fee's type contracts.... hate'em!

but basically - if a buyer asks for a document, why are you reluctant to provide it ?
could be the next buyer if this one pulls out will also ask for it.
it could be his solicitor has adviced him to get hold of that document to ensure all is in good shape and that no modifications have been done without necessary planning permissions or building regs...

Richard_Webster

Buyer's solicitors will want to advise their clients about any conditions that could affect them, e.g. don't build extensions without consent (even if otherwise it would be permitted development) or particular windows have to be frosted glass.

tiggerkid

Hi all,

Thank you very much for all your replies.

The question about what buyers are trying to achieve is the one that I also can't answer. The planning permission covering construction of over 150 dwellings on the estate covers the phase where our house was being built at the time. The construction on our estate was in several phases. Ours was phase 1 and that planning permission covers it. All others cover subsequent phases, i.e. the entire estate. The estate was constructed by Redrow PLC - http://www.redrowplc.co.uk/About-Redrow/History-Of-Redrow/

It's not a tiny firm of dodgy builders. It's one of the large nationwide building firms, so I doubt that they didn't obtain a planning permission when constructing the estate. I appreciate that the buyers are probably concerned about illegal construction but the planning permission that covers 150 houses does cover our house! Why this isn't enough is beyond me! We haven't made any modifications other than adding a conservatory and the queries regarding that have already been responded to.

The solicitors are high street solicitors and the deal is fixed. The reason why they want to charge extra is because this query isn't part of standard queries that the deal would normally cover and with the endless queries that our buyers keep raising, I am not surprised that she wants to charge extra. It's absolutely ridiculous at times!

hamster2013, we don't have these documents. Otherwise I would have provided them. The only reason I've seen the planning permission covering 150 houses was because our EA was so scared to lose the sale that he called in a favour and somehow obtained it through the solicitors their firm has relationship with and that planning permission has been provided to the buyers. Not enough. They still want us to pay for copies of others. Because our solicitors said we will have to pay for those and the additional correspondence, I've said to the EA that the buyers are welcome to obtain those but at own cost.

I know how this sounds but, believe me, over the last couple of months our buyers expected us to fund so many things that I am also at the point of considering pulling out. I am sure there is a limit as to what the seller must fund! They are after all funding things like environmental authority search etc.

Even our solicitor said that she would expect buyers to fund those types of queries themselves!

eddddy

tiggerkid wrote: »

The question about what buyers are trying to achieve is the one that I also can't answer.

Hi tiggerkid

Are you keeping your EA in the loop? I would be tempted to ask the EA to have a chat with the vendor to try to understand their concerns.

For example, they may be asking their solicitor casual questions without realising the grief it's causing to get answers. (Or they may have a very specific and genuine concern that the conservatory may breach a planning condition, for example.)

I would expect a good EA to get involved in facilitating and progressing the sale in this way.