House Purchase - no building regs for extension!

jbainbridge

Our last house had an extension with no BC sign off. Our surveyor had no issues and the council confirmed that as it was over 4 years old they could take no action. We bought it. The council can only take action if they believe it to be unsafe. We did not get an indemnity (in 2002).

We sold a couple of years ago. The buyers got an indemnity - I guess because their lenders required it.

martinsurrey

davidmcn wrote: »

Bear in mind that there are millions of buildings still standing whose foundations would be considered inadequate by today's standards. In the context of a 5' x 5' extension which isn't showing any actual problems just now, this doesn't seem like a big deal.

Exactly.

3" short on a modern extension (so what, still 2-3' deep), on an equivalent Victorian build the foundations could have been 6" deep, straight onto the ground, yet people queue up to buy them.

blackshirtuk

I tend to agree with other posters that it will be fine, but I am not buying your house after you, so you need to negotiate with the current owners to the value if what it would cost to put right.

would that be the cost to reinstate it or the cost to underpin?

You need to have that in your pocket for when you come to sell and it comes up for your buyers. Mortgage rules are only going to get tougher so you need to be prepared.

this is all assuming your lender will go ahead now.

rajanm

Yes I think short of getting a letter from the council to say they won't enforce any action on the extension, our next best solution is to get some money off the house price.

Again, I've been doing my research and the max fine Bromley council can impose is £5,000 so I'm thinking that the best solution would be to ask for this plus the cost of underpinning the extension.

We've gone back to the vendor to see if he'll get a letter from the council but to be honest it seems like he can't be bothered and he's said we should get it (even though we don't own the house!!). I think he'd rather reduce the price and move to exchange so perhaps this may be the route we'll take

Halle71

We experienced exactly the same thing but as the seller not the buyer.
However we didn't even found out until the building regs cert was requested by our buyers because the solicitor who did our conveyancing when we purchased it had given us a document saying she had seen it (the Legal Ombudsman later deemed her negligent).

Our council were very helpful and building regs wrote a letter explaining not enough site surveys had been done to pass the site but what they did see was fine and that they would take no future action. This was adequate for our buyers and their mortgage company but it was a house in an area of SW London that went mental last year so, as others have said it depends how much you want to buy and how much they want to sell :-)

rajanm

Yes our sellers for some reason don't seem to want to ask the council for a letter which is bizarre. It makes me think that the foundations might not have been the only problem with the extension - although to be fair, I did speak to the building control officer who visited the house and all we talked about was the foundations so it's unlikely they're hiding any bigger issues

Vectis

After this length of time the Council will only step in and enforce something if the building is deemed to be unsafe. As the extension has been there for 14 years (with no problems?) and we're talking about a very small extension (5ft x 5ft) with foundations only 3 inches too short, I don't think I'd worry too much.

Just out of interest, what's the extension for? At only 5ft x 5ft I can only imagine it's a downstairs toilet (I'm assuming we're talking single storey extension here?) otherwise it would hardly be worth building.