FTB - Crazy to continue with purchase with no building control or PP for extensions?

StevenX

My partner and I are first time buyers in the London area; we've been searching for a long time to buy our first house and finally had an offer accepted on a really nice house in South London.

However, the conveyancing process has been taking a very long time - we're about 10 weeks in now - and our homebuyers report identified that it was unlikely that the loft and/or rear kitchen extension had planning permission and building control certification. In particular, there's no banister to the stair flight to the loft and no smoke alarms in the property - which could presumably be fixed quite easily - but also the stair to the loft bedroom is too steep, which it's probably not possible to fix.

Looking on the council website, there doesn't seem to have been any planning permission application for the extensions, and no building control certificates have been produced to date. I don't think we'll ever get retrospective planning permission, and I don't think the seller is going that route. However, the extension appears to have been built in around 2016, so likely not enforceable from what I understand (?). In the local authority searches, two pending building control applications have been identified for the extensions - presumably the buyer's trying to get retrospective consent/regularisation. I don't think this is likely to be granted given the stair steepness - although don't know if after some time building control may not insist on such details?..

Having read a bunch of stuff online, it's unclear how much of an issue this is. My partner is now becoming extremely concerned about this - not so much from a structural safety point of view, but more around how difficult it may be to sell the property on in, say, five or ten years' time.

What advice would you give us? My partner's inclined to pull out and lose a few hundred pounds if the seller can't provide building control certification. I'm less bullish on this, but of course, we both need to be happy - and being able to sell the property on down the line is becoming a concern to us.

Waunakee

Speak to your solicitors as I fear your biggest hurdle may be your mortgage provider.

They would normally insist on the purchase of indemnity insurance in such cases but,if as you say,the vendor has lodged building control applications this option has effectively been removed.

user1977

It's not the most historic of alterations, though fair to say the chances of enforcement action are pretty much nil, and will be even less in 5-10 years time. So where does that leave you? The property is what it is - so if your surveyor thinks it's structurally ok, and you don't mind about the stair steepness or other things which don't comply with 2016 building regulations, then all you can do is guess what buyers in the future might think.

You haven't told us how old the rest of the house is, but bear in mind that (even if you've seen the original consents for it) it's not going to comply with current building regulations either.

anselld

Planning permission was probably not required under permitted development and as you asy, lack of BC certification is beyond the time limit for enforcement action.   In practice there is not a real issue, but the lack of paperwork makes solicitors and mortgage companies nervous.  The problem you may face is that your solicitor also acts for the mortgage co and will be obliged to inform them of the issue and they may insist on regularisation whether you like it or not.

StevenX

The house is a 1930s terraced number, all in good order - although, as you say it may not meet modern building regulations, and there are probably missing FENSA certificates for windows and doors and so on. The extensions also appear to be sound and solidly constructed in general.

I personally am not worried about the stair steepness - the main concerns are 1) the council taking enforcement action now that they've been approached for building control regularisation, particularly if they deny the request, and 2) future buyers being put off due to the historical lack of PP and BC approval and it becoming a really difficult property to sell - and we'd be in a much more complex situation with regards to chains than we're in now as first time buyers.

thegreenone

If BC don't come back with approval, are you now looking at a two bed with loft storage, which could lead to negotiation on price?

If you have plans/photos, could you do some initial consultations with architect/SE/builder to see if the stairs could be moved, at a later date, to reduce the steepness and make it a habitable room?

ele_91

Is your solicitor informing the mortgage lender? The solicitor we used did inform Barclays when this happened to us and they refused to lend. It put us off trying a new lender because of the resale issue. Also was the house valued at the price you agreed? If the room without regs in the loft was described as a bedroom you may find as it’s technically not, the house is valued as such. 

Section62

StevenX said:

I personally am not worried about the stair steepness -

The thing that would worry me isn't the risk of enforcement or the potential future resale issues.

What would worry me is whether the members of my family sleeping on the second floor would be able to get out of the house safely in the event of a fire breaking out in the house.

I'd question how much I would trust someone who carries out a loft conversion without providing the basics of a safe means of access/egress.  To do that and not fit smoke alarms would leave me with zero trust in this person caring about the safety of anyone.

If they did that, then what else is wrong with the house which cannot be seen by a surveyor doing a routine homebuyers report?

The person who commissioned that work is, frankly, reckless.  I wouldn't be happy living in the house without first having thorough checks to make sure there are no other safety related issues.  If the vendor is trying to get regularisation then that would be a start, provided they have fully declared all the work carried out, rather than just trying to get sign off on the most obvious stuff.

NQManchester

I’d personally want compensation if I was to proceed, not sure it should be becoming your problem because they couldn’t be bothered to sort out building control.
I’d also be worried what else they didn’t do properly.