Vendors lied to solicitors

lisyloo

If you ask a layman if the mortar/render is lime and they say "yes" because thats what someone told them, can you rely on that?

I am not a solicitor but as a seller I have assumed I am liable for what I say and if I don't know then I say I don't know.


I'm selling a flat for someone in a nursing home, so the two previus owners are dead and have lsot capacity.
I was asked about japanese knotweed, I said don't know on the basis of being liable if I said no.

maisie_cat

I know there are builders out there who when asked to use lime render actually use a cement based render with lime in it. If a builder called it lime render I can understand why the vendors may have believed it was. Did you specify what you meant by lime render?
In terms of cost, do you know the additional marginal cost of removing the render? the scaffolding would need to go up anyway and my experience of removing incorrectly applied cement render is that it hacks of quite easily, much quicker than peeling the paint off and leaving the render.
Again the scaffolding would stay for reapplying and coloured lime render does not require painting over. If the additional cost is not too high it maybe better to save the hassle and just do it.
We did.

AnotherJoe

There's an interesting lesson here, when they said "no" to the test, a better response would have been "in that case we will have to act as if its cement and reduce our offer by £x" which then gives them an incentive to allow a test.

TamsinC

Ah well, seems we are doomed, no written evidence at the solicitors. we shall just suck it up and get on with life.

Like Maisie cat says - we were going to take the paint off anyway - may as well take the render off instead and the paint will come with it at that point. Not going to hassle about it. Would have been nice to be able to afford for someone else to do it instead of us.

Another Joe - lesson learnt believe me.

AnotherJoe

On the upside, I suspect it will be little or no more complex or costly to take cement off, than paint off render. The paint would soak in and not necessarily just peel,off easily
I once had to remove paint over plaster (Not quite the same but perhaps close? ....) and a fair bit of plaster came off as well. Ended up replastering.