Seller offers no warranty for a recently converted flat

Money_girl

Hello there,


As the title says I am in a process of buying a 1 bed top floor converted flat. It has been converted recently adhering to building regulations. However, the seller is offering no building warranty such as NHBC or Zurich cover. The property management will be transferred from sellers to a newly registered management company (all owners of the 3 flats will have an equal share in the company and so will become freeholders in this way). By the way seller is also suggesting to transfer the freehold to the management company once the last flat is purchased. (At the moment only 2 flats are being purchased with the third one still on the market).

Therefore if there are defects the company may not have the assets to rectify those defects and the sellers will have effectively abdicated responsibility for them to that company.
It is a cash purchase.

My solicitor is offering to have a building insurance placed on risk from the moment the contracts are exchanged.

Please could you advice whether it is a big issue. How could I deal with it?

Thank you very much.

Leo2020

The house should still be built to building regulations. And it should be signed off by the local council.

If it had a warranty it should be easier to claim from the warranty provider for any problems. But I have heard sometimes claiming is easier said than done.

TrickyDicky101

Get a survey done and consider your position based off of the survey conclusions?

martindow

Who is telling you it adheres to building regs? Making one building into several flats is likely to have needed planning permission. Have you looked on the local authority's website to look at the planning portal to see if there is anything there? Are the flats listed separately for council tax?

If you can't find anything I would worry about the quality and legality of this conversion.

Money_girl

Thank you for your advice, guys.

The home buyer survey was carried out and the report was good.

I checked the planning permission on the local borough website. They applied for it once which was rejected. Then after a couple of years they appealed and this time it was successful. The flat has a separate council tax bill.

I am mostly concerned about selling in the future. I have heard lenders don't give the mortgage easily if there is no warranty for a newly build or newly converted house. This is my main concern. I will try to call different banks to ask weather it would be a problem. No warranty doesn't sound a big deal to me but if the flat will become unsaleable in the future it may turn out to a nightmare.