help wth legal issue please

vix2000

my daughter has just bought a house. it has taken all our and her savings to get together the deposit, stamp duty and solicitors fees.

For various reasons our solicitor has been pretty poor.

she completed last friday, and over the weekend various people including a plumber have tried to turn on the central heating boiler, and concluded its not worked for a long time and is kn*ckered.

on phoning the solicitor today she was told "thats tough. it says theres a gas fired central heating system, it doesnt say it works".

Now she has had no previous opportunity to check this, as access to the house hasn't been easy, and when the sellers put this on their sellers form we trusted there was a working system.

Has anyone been in this situation before?

Mrs_Thrify

Hiya, I don't have the answer but I belive you buy as seen, move in and then sort things out from your ownership. Once the contracts have exchanged the problem is all yours. Tough luck I think although not very nice.

MissMotivation

I don't mean to sound unsympathetic but she should have had the system tested before exchange of contracts, most survey reports these days suggest getting gas and electricity checked before exchange.

Unless the seller has categorically said that the heating is in good working order then I don't think she has a leg to stand on

HugoSP

Sorry but I tend to agree with the solicitor here. Maybe you have received poor service from them, and maybe more questions coud have been asked before she went ahead with the purchase.

Unless the sellers have expressed that the system was servicable, she has no comeback. If they or a surveyor has put in writing that the system is servicable then she has comeback against that person. I know someone who got his surveyor's professional indemnity insurance to pay for new radiators in his house as the surveyor had commented in the report that the radiators were fine.

Maybe a Warmfront grant can help in the longer term. If she can weather one winter with a quick fix or some other form of heating, then this could be a solution. The amount of help she'll get will depend on IIRC what her earnings are. Her being on benefits would help.

I don't have the contact details for Warmfront, but a search would probably bring them up.

Sammy85_2

Hi,

Im afraid it is as the solicitor and others in this thread have stated previously.

If you read the brochure for the property it will state somewhere on it (usually the small print) something along the lines of "the seller assumes no responsibiliy for the particulars contained herein, and thats its the buyers responsibility to check them"
Unless you have written proof that the seller stated that the Central Heating sytem worked you dont have a leg to stand on.

My sister bought a house that said it had GSH, only to find it had the system, which was fitted years ago. But unfortunately it wasnt connected to the mains. The house had never had Gas piped into it. This cost them around a £1000 to rectify, and they managed to get the cost of the survey refunded as the survey stated gas as an ammenity.
Nothing could be claimed from the seller as they stated it had GSH, which was correct.

If you had just a bog standard survey as required by the bank, it will probably state the same, that it has a central heating system. Again, it is the sellers responsibility to take additional measures to ensure that gas, electricity and central heating systems are correct and working.
If on the other hand you took these additional surveys then you could claim back from the surveyor (check the small print though, as they usually have a get-out clause too)

Its a case of Sold As Seen and Buyer Beware im afraid. Its like buying a second had car and then complaining after because it doesnt run. You should have checked it all out before.

Sorry if this sound unsympathetic, i dont mean to be, im sorry you're in this situation, but im afraid you're just going to have to grit your teeth and bare it. You can get a new boiler for less than £500 now, even get a second had one from ebay for £100 if you just want something to keep you going til she's saved for a new one! (make sure a corgi reg. gas engineer fits it though!)

Hope thats of some help to you,

Sammy

kunekune

"im afraid you're just going to have to grit your teeth and bare it"

Sorry, I shouldn't laugh at a typo, but ...
Baring it is the last thing this person's likely to be doing it. THough they might be bearing it.

No insult meant, btw, it was just very funny.

Debt_Free_Chick

vix2000 wrote: »

on phoning the solicitor today she was told "thats tough. it says theres a gas fired central heating system, it doesnt say it works".

Presumably this was the comment made by the seller on the Seller's Property Information Form (SPIF) and your daughter had a copy of this before exchange?

If so, then legally, your daughter bought a house with a GFCH system - but absolutely no reassurance from the seller that it was actually working. As the law stands, she knew this because it had been declared on the SPIF.

A hard lesson to learn, but always read the SPIF and be a little cynical about it - question what's there!

For now, try to find a decent CORGI engineer locally who will look at it and give an estimate for repair. It might not cost a lot - but then again, it might (sorry ). It might just need an annual service to clear the jets and other serviceable parts - who knows though

Good luck - hard on your daughter, but we all have similar war stories from our first ever purchase!

Richard_Webster

I agree generally with these posts.

It is really up to you to check these things, but so many people don't understand the way things work that I would expect a solicitor to explain this kind of thing. The standard paragraphs of my pre contract report contain the following:

[FONT=&quot]We will normally have sent you a note about the importance of having a survey at the beginning of the transaction. The point is that the property is sold as it stands and if it has any defects of a structural nature you will have no come-back against the seller. This also applies to other matters such as the wiring, any central heating system, and any other equipment or services at the property. You must always be advised to either have these properly investigated or accept the risk that there could conceivably be a problem. The mortgage lender's valuation is a very limited one prepared for the lender's purposes only and you cannot normally rely upon any statements in it. Also there may be points that the surveyor has not noticed because they were not within the scope of his instructions. [/FONT]

I would have expected the solicitor to given some explanation along those lines.

merlinthehappypig

One area where the Scottish system is better, actually, though this doesn't help you, I know. Scottish sellers are usually required to warrant that things like central heating are in good order and working for a fixed period after the buyers move in. If they don't work the sellers have to pay to fix it. High time this was introduced in England.