Obtaining consent for extension in share of freehold

AnotherJoe

Summer17 wrote: »

if the women is not the owner ignore her. I email all the directors and they all replied yes bar one (Knew she would say no) so she was out voted so the build could go ahead. ignore this women.

The OP's issue is, the directors are not saying "go ahead", because they are concerned they will be sued.

So currently the OP is outvoted.

MarianeJ

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Then for goodness sake call her bluff and get on with it.

It's not down to me, the co-owners are the ones that need to understand that..

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Thats not correct. There are many properties where you wouldnt have such issues and you wouldnt have litigious neighbours who could object with at least some basis in law, unlike yours..

Yes well I didn't buy the neighbours did I? How can you predict that when you meet her when you've just given an offer and she is super friendly and telling you no problem. We couldn't assess the foundation and walls before getting the keys so we couldn't finalise any plan during the buying process.

AnotherJoe wrote: »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy
If i was in your position I'd tart it up superficially, sell it and regard it as a lesson learned rather than throw good money after bad but that's your choice.

I consider that a sunk cost because giving up and selling the flat in its current state (worse than prior purchase due to engineer investigating foundations, walls and ceilings doesn't mean it'll be an easy way out. I don't see how going through a complicated sale, that requires redoing the flat to then go through another buy and struggle again due to the fact that we are not british, and then potential encounter new issues, is going to be any better.

Anyway, that is a very subjective and personal matter. You don't know how much we've been through, you don't know who we are and what our aspirations are. It's a life choice. You need to take risks. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't. I've learned loads in the process and I'd feel better with myself knowing I tried, fought, and did everything in my power rather than gave up. We haven't even been through the licence to alter yet. We gave up on a lot of things already, we chose to reduce the extension to half, they all appreciated our efforts apart from that one owner. I'm not going to show myself weak by telling her ok you've won.

AnotherJoe wrote: »

You cannot possibly "overrule legal advice" because you aren't a judge so you'll be waiting a long time. You could probide them an indemnity are you willing to pay that?

I'm not the one who said I could overrule, I was asked, I did what I can to reassure them.

AnotherJoe wrote: »

I and others have already posted what you can do, its up to you which you choose and whether you go ahead or not.

Yes and i honestly really appreciated everyone's help; I did take notes of many useful elements. So thank you. I have a chat with my contractor and we are working on drafting a letter with what we got.

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Seems to me you made a high risk purchase of a money pit, what with cracks in walls, risk of flooding, too small, too many conditions stating you cannot do the works you want to, and uncooperative neighbours who will kick up a fuss about any joint works needed or not.

Seems to you because you don't have the full context; we bought a flat we a huge potential in a really good area. Those risks of flooding are present in way more places than you think, and being a garden flat, of course we are the ones likely to have them. We adapt with what's been recommended. The cracks on the walls were investigated and they are historical, so nothing structural like we had initially thought. Too small? Who said that? 72sqm. Just not convenient to have a tiny bathroom when you want to start a family so if you have the opportunity to give it a try, why not?

AnotherJoe wrote: »

.... hmmm that triggers a final idea. Tell the two neighbours who will potentially side with you that it looks like that, unless they agree you can do your works, you are going to have to sell your flat at a loss, which will look very bad when it comes to them wanting to sell as that will pretty much directly impact the price of their flats when buyers can see the price of flats in their block dropping. Maybe that will give them the gumption to vote in your favour. And if that doesn't work take this advice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7QhxklIKbw

Thanks for the suggestion;

Will keep you posted. Fingers crossed

MarianeJ

Summer17 wrote: »

if the women is not the owner ignore her. I email all the directors and they all replied yes bar one (Knew she would say no) so she was out voted so the build could go ahead. ignore this women.

That was the case scenario we were hoping to have... Hope my case has made you feel lucky, you should! Enjoy

AnotherJoe

MarianeJ wrote: »

Yes well I didn't buy the neighbours did I? How can you predict that when you meet her when you've just given an offer and she is super friendly and telling you no problem. We couldn't assess the foundation and walls before getting the keys so we couldn't finalise any plan during the buying process.

Of course you could. You had the choice to wait until you'd had a structural survey before buying, and if access by the surveyor was refused you had the choice to walk.

MarianeJ wrote: »

Too small? Who said that?

By definition. You dont spend what sounds like an inordinate amount of time money and effort adding an extension if the place isn't too small. If its not too small, dont extend.

MarianeJ wrote: »

You need to take risks. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't. I've learned loads in the process and I'd feel better with myself knowing I tried, fought, and did everything in my power rather than gave up. We haven't even been through the licence to alter yet. We gave up on a lot of things already, we chose to reduce the extension to half

Perhaps if they arent being cooperative and you want to "win" you might as well go back to the larger extension since its seems unlikely it will make any difference to the legalities of whether you can extend or not. This battle you've gotten yourselves into isn't over planning permission but covenants and rights of freeholders.
Indeed there's another option, tell her since she apparently intends to sue you will be going back to the original larger extension since it wont make any difference to the legalities of whats allowed. Maybe she'll then cave in, back to the smaller extension.

MarianeJ

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Of course you could. You had the choice to wait until you'd had a structural survey before buying, and if access by the surveyor was refused you had the choice to walk.

We did have the structural survey done before buying. They told us it wasn't major, the cracks aren't costly to repair, there wasn't any structural implications/risks so that part wasn't and still isn't an issue. But it does require us to repair. The survey still said if we were happy to go with the works and accept the costs, the purchase was still worthwhile as it does have a lot of potential that would outweight the effort (hence the effort we re putting)

AnotherJoe wrote: »

By definition. You dont spend what sounds like an inordinate amount of time money and effort adding an extension if the place isn't too small. If its not too small, dont extend.

It's not about the size, it's about the room needed to accommodate a second bathroom, hence needing to move the kitchen onto the extension and have the bathroom as an en-suite, smaller than the kitchen so we can enlarge the bedroom internally (hence why we gave up on that side of the extension). But we mainly gave up on the extension on that side because of the concerns that we had looked into and asked the engineer to investigate; he said the foundations were weak; the garden meets the rear bedroom wall at 70cm above flat floor level so it's basically like soil - this was one we agreed wasn't worth the risk)

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Perhaps if they arent being cooperative and you want to "win" you might as well go back to the larger extension since its seems unlikely it will make any difference to the legalities of whether you can extend or not. This battle you've gotten yourselves into isn't over planning permission but covenants and rights of freeholders.
Indeed there's another option, tell her since she apparently intends to sue you will be going back to the original larger extension since it wont make any difference to the legalities of whats allowed. Maybe she'll then cave in, back to the smaller extension.

You're right. We did feel somehow gutted that we gave up loads of stuff to avoid conflicts and yet end up here anyway. But well.. everything happens for a reason. I'm okay with it.

Haha true; but it's too late and we don't need it anymore. Wasn't fundamental

[Deleted User]

We were very lucky as we needed to get 70 tons of soil out of the garden as it was raise. To do this we had to asked the neighbours of the 2 houses next door not to park on their drive in the day time.

Our path to the garden was and arm lengh between our building and the neighbour fence. We needed to get grabbing lorries in there & a digger, so had to knock fence down and rebuild the fence when completed.

Also needed to ask the neighbour behind our garden if we could knock their wall down with a promise rebult and rendered. ( it was knackerd.)

I actually did'nt think my extention would happen but thanks god for loverly neighbours as they all could of easliy said NO.
I do hope you get what you want. Shame you dont have understanding neighbours. Not sure how it will make their property worth less as that was a condtion to us as well, was told it will not devalue their property. Even thou the one above us had a loverly garden to look at. Now they only got a flat roof to look at..