Help! Mortgage about to be derailed by extensive planning permission request - is this normal?

StripeyStan

Hello

We're trying to sell our flat and have hit a weird snag - I'd love to know people's thoughts / advice on this. Have any of you hit the same problem?

Our buyer is insisting on planning permissions for our flat (and everything else on the surrounding estate - for reasons we can't fathom), even though the flat is over 5 years old and has had no adaptations. It's a leasehold flat. We've been able to supply her with the planning docs lodged at the council. The flat is of standard construction - a 5 storey block - and has an EWS1 certificate. The buyer will be the third person to live in the flat and has applied for a mortgage from Nationwide. She will be a resident, not a buy to let landlord. 

Now, she tells us her lender is insisting on confirmation that all planning conditions referred to in the planning permission for the initial construction have been discharged and complied with. The flat comes with a building warranty. The buyer has taken out 'breach of planning and building regulation' indemnity but apparently this doesn't feel enough for their lender, Nationwide.

All of this feels really odd to us - when we bought the flat, just 3 years ago, we didn't have to show any planning docs at all, let alone go through the docs, point by point, and show everything had been complied with.

Any ideas what this could be about?

Thanks

Stan

user1977

It's not that abnormal a request, though the risk seems minute if it's a sizeable development completed some time ago. Has anybody actually looked at the planning conditions, and if so what might not have been discharged?

StripeyStan

Thank you.

ReadingTim

It sounds like Nationwide are less keen to lend on leasehold newbuild (and new-ish build) flats than they used to be (or other lenders might have been), so are wanting to dot every i and cross every t in terms of planing documents etc.  That or your buyer's solicitor is being excessively pedantic and needs to be put back in his box.  Either way, as none of these documents relate to your property specifically, I'd be telling them (via your solicitor) to sort the matter out themselves and get on with it.  If they can't or won't do that, the buyer should find themselves another lender or solicitor, or you could find yourself another buyer.  

ComicGeek

I've worked on lots of projects where the developer never bothered to discharge certain planning conditions. Now years later it creates problems when the original purchasers look to sell - the Council refuses to discharge the planning conditions without the required information, the current owners can't provide that information as it relates to things that the developer should have done. No real solution, so everyone stuck in limbo.

Another risk item that mortgage providers are trying to avoid. Your solicitor should have asked the same questions when you bought.

user1977

I doubt it's actually the lender asking the question specifically, but the solicitors acting for them.