Seller didn’t disclose bat roost in loft

HampshireH

Bit of a random one....but have you been coming and going from the flat as you please since you were given the keys?

Seller sounds bonkers. I personally would avoid. I have dealt with flats on an estate of social housing. The faeces were not a problem but the urine used to run down the internal walls and causes issues (obviously). People moved out as they couldn't tolerate it. They also reported associated pests and being bitten

Got the bats conservation in and they required us to put up additional boxes on the estate to encourage them to migrate to them and did allow for the holes to be filled at a certain time of year. No idea if it worked as there were a large number of properties with them in.

Their experience put me off.

gengastars

Yup. I’ve been in with tradespeople etc. The seller left to go to the seaside. Eccentric from day 1. Definitely would prefer to deal directly with an estate agent in future

DigForVictory

Get your ISA sorted, and return to house hunting.

Me, I'd have sold the bats as a Feature, mentioned them at every opportunity & implied that they add value - certainly they add curiosity as well as assorted limitations on what you can do in different seasons.

If you're not minded to take up shared accom fair enough, let another (bat-loving) buyer emerge & take up the good fight with the dotty seller.

Best of luck!

Mutton_Geoff

onwards&upwards wrote: »

nobody is committed until exchange and before that any money spent is always a gamble

It's not a "gamble", it's called due diligence. A property purchase is for most people the largest purchase they will ever make. To not spend money on detailed research into the prospective purchase to enable the final decision to be made (ie contract signing) would be negligent.


The amount "lost" is also trivial compared to potential losses caused by buying the wrong or a defective property. It's therefore not a gamble, but part of the whole investment decision.

phoebe1989seb

The four most recent houses we've owned have all had bats living either in the attics or in the walls. At no time did any of the sellers mention the fact, although when purchasing our current property - a repossession, so very little information available and no contact with the previous owners obviously - we did see a dead bat in the porch....

We don't have any issues with them and nor did our buyers when we mentioned it during the selling process of our last three homes. It's par for the course in old buildings, as far as we're concerned. Our current cottage is 400 years old and very rural, so bats swooping past your head when perambulating the garden in the evening, owls (they're outside the bedroom window as I type!), toads (DH found a huge one in the boiler room the other night :eek:) are to be expected.

Fortunately we don't have enough to have issues with bat poo/urine, but we did have an injured bat earlier this week who I think had collided with a window. Sadly he was dead in the morning

onwards&upwards

Mutton_Geoff wrote: »

It's not a "gamble", it's called due diligence. A property purchase is for most people the largest purchase they will ever make. To not spend money on detailed research into the prospective purchase to enable the final decision to be made (ie contract signing) would be negligent.


The amount "lost" is also trivial compared to potential losses caused by buying the wrong or a defective property. It's therefore not a gamble, but part of the whole investment decision.

At no point did I suggest not spending the money.

It’s still a gamble though, the seller/buyer can change their mind on a whim the day before exchange if they want to,

Squoozy

I’d walk away from this purchase and be glad you had the chance to do so.

A few years ago my son bought a house. In between exchange and completion he discovered that the vendor had sold the rights to his garden to an electricity company. The vendor had done this after completing the information form (two weeks before exchanging contracts) and been paid £10,000. Following legal advice and a delay to completion for several weeks, my son was advised that he had no choice but to complete. After completion he sued the vendors and was eventually awarded the £10,000. The whole process took over a year and the legal cost almost outweighed the award but he didn’t want the vendors to get away with it. The learning from this for us is the property information forms are worthless and once a sale has gone through you are stuck with whatever is wrong with a house. As well as the electricity rights the cesspit the vendor said had just been emptied was completely full and according to the people who came to empty it could not have been emptied for years.

unforeseen

Is the loft/roof space part of the flat? If not why does the owner need to mention it?

Davesnave

Squoozy wrote: »

A few years ago my son bought a house. In between exchange and completion he discovered that the vendor had sold the rights to his garden to an electricity company. The vendor had done this after completing the information form (two weeks before exchanging contracts) and been paid £10,000. Following legal advice and a delay to completion for several weeks, my son was advised that he had no choice but to complete. After completion he sued the vendors and was eventually awarded the £10,000. The whole process took over a year and the legal cost almost outweighed the award but he didn’t want the vendors to get away with it. The learning from this for us is the property information forms are worthless and once a sale has gone through you are stuck with whatever is wrong with a house. As well as the electricity rights the cesspit the vendor said had just been emptied was completely full and according to the people who came to empty it could not have been emptied for years.

Interesting account, but it raises more questions than it answers.

Firstly, what practical upshot resulted from the "rights to the garden" being sold? Did Western Power start growing vegetables there, or did they build a sub-station? What % of the garden remained unaffected?

In 2012, I "sold the rights to some land" via a wayleave agreement to Western Power. They put up a new telegraph pole, taking up about, 0.2 square metres of space in over 5 acres and I received the princely sum of £150. Practical effect on me = zero, but if push had come to shove, the pole could have been installed anyway under the powers that utility providers have.

Then there's the "cesspit" not emptied in years. Cesspits are not septic tanks and need emptying at least annually, and often as frequently as every 4-6 months. If they aren't emptied in years, they overflow, which the Environment Agency will be very interested to hear about. They have powers to halt a sale or organise immediate remediation, so it seems to me that your son didn't have a full survey or do their own due diligence.


Surely the info on the TA6 allowed your son to pursue the seller, so it wasn't "worthless?" Apparently he wasn't awarded costs, but I cannot comment on why that might have been the case.

gengastars

Thanks

Unforeseen, yes the loft is part of the flat