Is change of deeds needed for conservatory

ebbsingen

We are selling our leasehold maisonette in south London and our buyers solicitors are now asking us to provide alterations to the deeds. My question has anyone else been in a similar situation and how did you resolve it.
Our buyers solicitors say in a letter to our solicitors: "it's the client’s duty to deduce title and to deal with any defects, and therefore please arrange for this to be amended as part of the Deed of Variation.
They claim that "Your client’s works to the property ( the conservatory) have altered its footprint and the Lease Plan and Land Registry plan are therefore not correct. Unless this is rectified now, this will cause issues when our clients come to sell the property in the future."
My solicitors are saying there should be no need for a need to change the lease plan and they have told the buyers solicitor this. So we are just waiting for them in the eleventh hour to agree on this, the whole chain is waiting for them to make up their minds, and is risking to fall through 5 months after sale was initially agreed. Just to add we have planning permission from the council but there was no building regulations approval as we never knew it was needed, so we have agreed to pay for a "Lack of Building Regulations Consent Indemnity Policy" Any ideas?
:eek:

eddddy

I guess the first questions would be:

- Did you get the freeholder's consent to build the conservatory?

- And is the land it is built on demised to you? (i.e. Does the lease show that bit of land 'belongs' to you?)

If the answer to those is "no", you might have bigger problems.

TBH, even if the answer to the above questions were "yes", if I were buying, I think I would want the lease plan altered to show the conservatory. Plus clarity in the lease about who is responsible for maintaining the conservatory.

Assuming you have freeholder's consent, you should have asked for the lease to be varied at the same time that consent was granted.

G_M

Yes, lease should reflect was you are the lessor of. That has changed, so you and the freeholder should have amended the lease.

HouseBuyer77

A conservatory would generally require permission from the freeholder (Though you'd need the precise clauses from the lease that say what requires permission to be sure, perhaps it used existing external doors, so it's not a structural alteration and the lease doesn't require you to gain permission).

Generally an indemnity is considered acceptable in these situations (this covers your buyer for the loss in value shoud the freeholder require to remove the conservatory).

How old is the conservatory? If it's been around for years without the freeholder asking about it your buyers should have nothing to worry about (if you put it up in the last 6 months there's a higher risk the freeholder comes along and asks them to pay for permission or order them to remove it).

ebbsingen

Did you get the freeholder's consent to build the conservatory?
Yes we got party wall consent from all neighbours and from freeholder.

- And is the land it is built on demised to you? (i.e. Does the lease show that bit of land 'belongs' to you?)
Not sure about this but lease shows house and garden where we built the small conservatory.

Hoping we are not in trouble, it's the first we hear about the lease should have been amended we were never advised by anyone...

Davesnave

ebbsingen wrote: »

. Just to add we have planning permission from the council but there was no building regulations approval as we never knew it was needed, so we have agreed to pay for a "Lack of Building Regulations Consent Indemnity Policy" Any ideas?
:eek:

Since when did building regs apply to conservatories?

There would need to be a heat loss calculation if it is not separated from another habitable room by an external grade door, but otherwise I don't think they apply. Is it open to another room in the maisonette?

I am building a conservatory at present and my building inspector isn't interested in or involved with that work.

ebbsingen

We didn't think we needed anything else than planning permission from the council which we got second time we asked, as we had to shrink the structure slightly and we got party wall positive acknowledgement from freeholder but no amended lease as we didn't know we had to and the freeholder is charging us money for anything, and making trouble by refusing to amend the lease as our buyer's solicitors want. Hoping that our solicitors will be able to convince them it's not necessary to change the lease plan.