Selling house with 25yr old kitchen extension

ccjsmith

Hello,

Like others on this forum, I am currently selling a house and I am starting to get worried about the kitchen extension. I found some useful tips from the old threads, but our situation is a little different.

We bought the property in 2007. The documents from the local council via the solicitor have no record of planning or building regs. There is a line saying the council only search back to 1999 without extra money. The conveyancer did not raise an issue at the time.

We have searched through a wad of paperwork from the previous owners. It looks like the extension was done way back in 1989 (based on a kitchen fitting quote matching the dimensions of the extension).

We have had no issues with the extension. Does anyone have any thoughts about what I should do next? I am not too worried about having to get indemnity insurance.

Thanks

ash28

We were in similar situation in 2011, selling a house with massive 2 storey side and single storey back extensions both built in the early 1980s.

Our buyer's solicitor asked about paperwork etc, but we didn't have any and told their solicitor that it hadn't been an issue when moved into the house in 1993 and nothing had changed.

Never heard anything else and the sale went through without a hitch regarding the extensions. We didn't need any form of insurance althoughI'm not sure about the buyers.

ccjsmith

Thanks for the reply, good to hear these kind of issues are not always a showstopper.

I am trying to see if there is a way of checking the council records on building regs without it counting as "contact" with the council. Has anyone done this previously?

ultrarunner

I had a similar situation when I bought my place - an extension but no record of it having been approved by building control etc. The solicitor advised me on no account to contact the council as effectively, "they didn't know that they didn't know about the extension".