Period conversion flats experiences, particularly in London

HNHN

Hi everyone,

I am a first time buyer and in the early stages of purchasing a home for myself with a mortgage. I have always lived in Victorian houses before and loved them, so I have a very strong preference for period properties over purpose built flats. However, I cannot afford a house (at least £500k in the area where I want to live), so the only option for me is period conversion flats. I have been reading many threads on here regarding completion certificates/buidling control sign-offs for those flats and my concern is the lack of those certificates for all the conversion flats I have been interested in, in London. My question is whether it is a norm that Victorian conversion flats built in the 1980s in London don't have a building control sign-off or any sort of conpletion certificate? They all have a planning permission though. The one particular flat that I am thinking of making an offer on is a loft conversion (top floor) in a Victorian house that was split into 3 flats in 1986-1987. There is a planning permission on the council website regarding this building work but no building control sign-off. I was wondering if anyone has any experience buying a period conversion flat with or without any sort of certificate that can share with me. I really want to go ahead with the purchase (assuming that the building survey is fine) but wondered if the lack of certificate would cause any issues down the road and if yes, how do people get round to it, as London is full of conversion flats and presumably not all buyers of those flats are cash buyers?

Doozergirl

Most London conversions pre-date the building regulations themselves, hence no certificates, and no mortgage issues.  Remember no one is asking for the building certificates for the house being built!   There is a cut off point, but also remember that people can do a lot of damage to a property even after something has been signed off.  

The most important thing is your survey and its condition today, not a decades old piece of paper that said it was okay to a lower standard than we operate today.  

We had a top floor conversion.  When we lifted the carpet you could see through the floorboards into the flat below.    That was 20 years ago and I'm sure that even that flat has  been improved in that time, but the quality of some will, no doubt, be questionable, so keep an eye out.  

macman

Conversion of a Victorian-era house to 2 or more flats would not necessarily have involved much in the way of structural work anyway. The kind of issues you are most likely to encounter probably relate to inadequate sound insulation (as highlighted in the above post), division of electrical, gas and water services etc.
The standard of work in that era varied greatly: some were done professionally, many were done on the cheap to take advantage of rapidly rising property prices in the 80's. 

K_S

@hnhn From a mortgage point of view, I've never encountered any widespread issues getting a mortgage for clients purchasing or remortgaging flat conversions in east London, especially ones that have been that way for a while.

As you rightly point out, they're very common in most parts of London and there's very little that's novel or contentious in most cases. 

ss2020jd

I bought a 1 bed flat on the top floor of a Victorian house in the 90s that had been newly converted and as I remember there was planning permission that my solicitor insisted upon but I don’t remember anything specific about building regs, although these may well have been available. The mortgage lenders at the time seemed happy with what was provided. 

I sold about 15 years later and don’t remember any issues with not having an original building regs certificate for the conversion. As Doozergirl said after this much time the survey now would be the most important thing. I think the general enforcement period from building control is about 10 years so it would be well over that. 

Some local authorities don’t make their building control database public and most only keep records for 15 years so it’s unlikely to appear on searches either. If you are still unsure just have a chat with your solicitor who must have processed many such early conversions over the years. 

davidmcn

It might be interesting to see plans showing exactly what the works comprised (I have those for my own 1980s conversion) but from a regulatory point of view, the lack of consents for 1980s work is about as relevant as the lack of certificates for building the thing in the 1880s. Nobody from the council is going to knock on the door and demand that ancient works be remedied in some way (assuming they've even got staff who can remember 1980s-era regulations).

The only occasional issue is suspicion that there's been other work done more recently - and if you don't have paperwork for anything, how do you evidence what was done when?

Alan2020

Are you willing to put up with the noise and smells that will come from a shoddy conversion.  Buy a flat built to be a flat from the onset and do your research.  In my experience, reinforced concrete floors cut down most sound as does solid heavy walls.

The sleepless nights will make you regret a museum relic purchase and you will have odd shaped rooms that don't make sense, a former cupboard being a bedroom and a Toilet the master bedroom.

Even with purpose built ones, ensure you research into the design, I think some of the ones in Greenwich millennium village had noise issues, it was on the news at that time.

SaintJudy

Doozergirl said:

We had a top floor conversion.  When we lifted the carpet you could see through the floorboards into the flat below.    That was 20 years ago and I'm sure that even that flat has  been improved in that time, but the quality of some will, no doubt, be questionable, so keep an eye out.  

I've just moved out of a top (second) floor conversion flat that I rented for 20 years and I had this as well. I could hear conversations from downstairs as clearly as if they were in the next room. I also got all the smells of the weed that the ground floor neighbours smoked. Lovely flat and great looking building, but it definitely felt like more of a house share than a separate flat at times

princeofpounds

Forget planning permission and building regs (for anything done years ago). Both will be well past any enforcement period and only hold some information value.

Concentrate on what you can tell about the quality of construction. I'm very familiar with these types of properties, and what really seems to define the experience people have is how well the conversion has been done. In particular, how much noise transmits through the floors/ceilings.

The other thing you will want to understand fully is the freehold management. Often these buildings have just two leasehold flats. They typically either share the freehold or one of them owns it. In this situation, it is very hard to change anything because the other flat owner can typically block any freehold actions you want to take (no-one to break the tie, essentially). So you need to be happy with the set-up from the start, and it's a good idea to discuss building management with the neighbour before exchanging contracts.

steve866

Alan2020 said:

Are you willing to put up with the noise and smells that will come from a shoddy conversion.  Buy a flat built to be a flat from the onset and do your research.  In my experience, reinforced concrete floors cut down most sound as does solid heavy walls.

The sleepless nights will make you regret a museum relic purchase and you will have odd shaped rooms that don't make sense, a former cupboard being a bedroom and a Toilet the master bedroom.

Even with purpose built ones, ensure you research into the design, I think some of the ones in Greenwich millennium village had noise issues, it was on the news at that time.

When I was in the market for a flat in London and looked only at Victorian conversion flats as opposed to purpose build based on:

-potential private garden 
-share of freehold
-decent proportioned rooms
-more reasonable ground rent / service charge 
-generally well built
-less likely to have cladding issues 

I’m by no means an expert and I don’t know about the noise, but in my opinion conversion flats seemed a lot better buy that purpose built. There’s also 1000s of them across London.

I ended up buying a freehold house in the end after saving for another couple of years.

Alan2020

steve866 said:

Alan2020 said:

Are you willing to put up with the noise and smells that will come from a shoddy conversion.  Buy a flat built to be a flat from the onset and do your research.  In my experience, reinforced concrete floors cut down most sound as does solid heavy walls.

The sleepless nights will make you regret a museum relic purchase and you will have odd shaped rooms that don't make sense, a former cupboard being a bedroom and a Toilet the master bedroom.

Even with purpose built ones, ensure you research into the design, I think some of the ones in Greenwich millennium village had noise issues, it was on the news at that time.

When I was in the market for a flat in London and looked only at Victorian conversion flats as opposed to purpose build based on:

-potential private garden 
-share of freehold
-decent proportioned rooms
-more reasonable ground rent / service charge 
-generally well built
-less likely to have cladding issues 

I’m by no means an expert and I don’t know about the noise, but in my opinion conversion flats seemed a lot better buy that purpose built. There’s also 1000s of them across London.

I ended up buying a freehold house in the end after saving for another couple of years.

So you didn't buy the Victorian flat conversion yourself, yet think it is better than a purpose built one ... hmmm