Indemnity insurance loft conversion

Doozergirl

pma13 wrote: »

Ok I get that it wouldn't meet current spec but if I re sell I can't list as 4 bed + my argument is that I thought I aS. Buying a 4 bed now it's just a posh loft room

If it is structurally sound (and you employed a surveyor to tell you) then it is a room!

“A posh loft room” is not a thing. It is either a room or it is a loft. You can’t sometimes use a room as a room but say it isn’t.

At some point there is a standard which is crossed and a loft becomes a room. That point has to be when it is structurally sound because that is all of us can expect from any house. Many house are originally built over many floors and don’t meet those standards at all. The typical Georgian and Victorian London terraces in very expensive areas never had to meet regs and aren’t required to meet anything that resembles current regulations and yet they fetch millions.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-70145063.html

Indemnity insrnace is available that will cover future owners too, not just the next owner.

glasgowdan

Unless I missed it, the OP said the conversion was done BEFORE 2007, not in 2007. If it were done LONG before 2007 then lack of a BRC is quite a normal common thing.

Our loft was converted in the 1970s and we have no paperwork for it. It's survived 40 winters and is ACTUALLY a bedroom.

Cakeguts

Where is the bottom of the staircase up to the loft. Is it like an extension of the original staircase or is it in a position where getting out of a house full of smoke won't be fast because the bottom of the stairs to the loft are not close to the top of the stairs to the ground floor?

davidmcn

pma13 wrote: »

Ok I get that it wouldn't meet current spec but if I re sell I can't list as 4 bed

I don't see why not. If it were, say, a kitchen in a ground floor extension which lacked paperwork, you wouldn't be obliged to pretend that the house didn't really have a kitchen.

I suspect that even if it meets all the current regs it would still be worth less than a house with all 4 beds on the first floor - not everyone wants another flight of stairs and to be "in the attic" with sloping ceilings / rain battering Velux windows etc.