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No completion certs, indemnity insurance - confused
electricfeel_2
Posts: 5 Forumite
Hi there,
This is a long one....
We are in the process of buying our first house and its just come to light that the current owners took down a wall and put up another one on the ground floor (opened up the kitchen diner and put a wall between the diner and livingroom)
It wasn't flagged up on the official home-buyers report but the conveyor emailed the sellers solicitors to say the wall change was a minor change and would be covered by an indemnity policy. The sellers are saying that as they are not supporting walls there was no need for a building warrant (in Scotland) - I phoned the local council and asked about it in a hypothetical situation and they said that internal non structural walls do not need building warrants which all seems fine. The council did say that in that instance you should write a letter to them to inform them of the work and so they can confirm its exemption. Unfortunately the sellers haven't done this.
I first requested that they go to the council and apply for some sort of sign off, but it looks like the council can't sign off work that didn't need a warrant in the first place.I have requested that a more in depth survey is done to check the structure of the house and that it was all done up to standard, along with the indemnity policy. My issue is now that if and when we sell in the future, this same issue might come up.
It has also transpired that a patio door was added by previous owners 6+ years ago, from my research this does need a building warrant. Can i request these documents? Surely if they don't have them they'd need to contact the local authorities?
As the issue wasn't raised in the homebuyers report, it hasn't been picked up by our lenders so far and they even sent someone out to value it and there was no issue.
What do you think? Is a structural survey and indemnity policy good enough? Ideally i just want everything to be signed off and legal to avoid future worry but it isn't seeming likely.
Any advice or experience would be great!
This is a long one....
We are in the process of buying our first house and its just come to light that the current owners took down a wall and put up another one on the ground floor (opened up the kitchen diner and put a wall between the diner and livingroom)
It wasn't flagged up on the official home-buyers report but the conveyor emailed the sellers solicitors to say the wall change was a minor change and would be covered by an indemnity policy. The sellers are saying that as they are not supporting walls there was no need for a building warrant (in Scotland) - I phoned the local council and asked about it in a hypothetical situation and they said that internal non structural walls do not need building warrants which all seems fine. The council did say that in that instance you should write a letter to them to inform them of the work and so they can confirm its exemption. Unfortunately the sellers haven't done this.
I first requested that they go to the council and apply for some sort of sign off, but it looks like the council can't sign off work that didn't need a warrant in the first place.I have requested that a more in depth survey is done to check the structure of the house and that it was all done up to standard, along with the indemnity policy. My issue is now that if and when we sell in the future, this same issue might come up.
It has also transpired that a patio door was added by previous owners 6+ years ago, from my research this does need a building warrant. Can i request these documents? Surely if they don't have them they'd need to contact the local authorities?
As the issue wasn't raised in the homebuyers report, it hasn't been picked up by our lenders so far and they even sent someone out to value it and there was no issue.
What do you think? Is a structural survey and indemnity policy good enough? Ideally i just want everything to be signed off and legal to avoid future worry but it isn't seeming likely.
Any advice or experience would be great!
0
Comments
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Your structural engineer will only be able to report on what he can see. That means he'll probably need the seller's permision to hack off plaster and look beneath.
Will they agree.....?0 -
G_M
I'm hoping they will be able to give us an idea of the quality of work without doing that - its a specialist surveyor that deals with building without local authority approval - suggested by my solicitor.0 -
An indemnity policy will cover the lack of consents, and in practice it isn't always possible to get the council to approve work retrospectively. Bear in mind that you invalidate any indemnity policy if anyone tips off the council about the issue.
Whether everything is structurally sound is a separate matter (and not guaranteed even if there were consents!).0 -
davidmcn
Nothing as of yet - I seem to be the one doing all the leg work researching what all this means. He was keen just to go through with the indemnity policy at the beginning.
I suppose this is more common than I think but scared that it will cost us in the future. We really love the house so keen just to find out about the quality of work and go from there...0 -
Bear in mind these things become less significant as time goes on (less risk of anyone objecting, more time for any structural etc problems to have made themselves known) - by the time you sell (or remortgage) it will be even more historic than it is now.0
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davidmcn
Thank you for reassuring me. In regards to the patio door, I found photos from zoopla pre 2014 and it was an older patio door. Surely that can't be an issue. It has probably always been a Patio door lol!0
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