Vendor uninstalling EV charging point

Section62

Pendrive said:

jonnydeppiwish! said:

I read your posts thoroughly. 

As for you travelling quite a way, what’s that go to do with it? You have to do your own due diligence in purchasing - the vendor has by telling you it was going to be taken. The fact that the EA wasn’t aware is not the Vendor’s problem.

What due diligence would you like me to do, in a context in which I am told something is included at times of viewing, and later find out that isn't the case? And I would suggest the EA, having been appointed by the vendor, is more their problem than mine. Or do you think I'm responsible for vetting them also? I have already contacted them to ask about this, and express my displeasure. But it's a separate issue anyway to what I have actually posted about here.

And why is my coming to this forum now, to ask about experiences and implications of this having now found out about it, not 'due diligence' being carried out?

In this case DD would have been asking for written confirmation from the agent that the EV charger point was included in the sale if it was important to you, or making the offer conditional on the EV charger being included.

Don't rely on what the EA (or their viewing assistants) say verbally.

Having been told the EV charger wasn't being included, the next DD step would be to ask the EA to confirm whether there was anything else the vendor was taking that they or their staff had misled you into believing was included.  The PIF should cover it anyway, but in case of later claims the PIF was completed in error it could be useful to have the EA on the hook as well.

Asking here isn't due diligence.  The people here can't respond to you on a professional basis and any advice offered is constrained by having only limited facts.  Opinions and views expessed on this forum aren't something you can rely on if your property transaction goes wrong.

Where opinions are expressed they are not necessarily fact.  Other opinions may differ.  I disagree with jonnydeppiwish! over the use of a qualified electrician.  I wouldn't accept removal of the CP in any circumstances other than a professional electrician either doing the removal, or inspecting the work after the removal has been carried out.  I would want that professional assurance that the system had been correcty isolated and left in safe state, and that the cabling left in-situ hadn't been damaged in a way which made it unusable in future.

As I mentioned above, be careful about being sucked into the 'personality' stuff.  Property purchases can be an emotional nightmare and need to be approached as far as possible as a neutral business transaction.  The more emotionally charged things become, the greater the risk of making poor decisions and having a bad outcome.

I don't think jonnydeppiwish! is trying to "blame" you.  I think they are just pointing out what anyone involved in property transactions would say - that if something is really important to you then you need to make sure it is nailed down (in writing), rather than relying on assumptions or what somebody said.

Try to focus on whether the property will be left in an appropriate and safe state.  If you go back and ask for £800 off the agreed price and the vendor reacts by withdrawing from the transaction (and frankly, I would) then everything else said here (and by the EA) becomes an irrelevance.

Pendrive

Section62 said:

It is possible the vendor has changed their mind about taking the CP and the EA is just covering for them by taking the blame.

However, beware of being sucked into ThisIsWeird's regular approach of assigning everything to some form of deep-seated personality fault in whoever the OP of a thread is dealing with.  Without meeting the individual being assessed of course, and only having snippits of information about them.

Whether or not the vendor has personal number plates on the car is completely irrelevant to your property purchase.

You are buying the house, not the person living in it.  All you need to know is whether the price you are paying for the property is 'fair' and whether the vendor is sufficiently trustworthy to give you vacant possession on the agreed date and with what remains/taken being as per the declaration.

Any pseudo-psychoanalysis of the vendor is futile, and likely totally incorrect.  A property purchase is a business transaction and should be approached on that basis.... try to avoid making it personal.

The comparison with the FIT payment case isn't a very good one.  That payment would be for something which is installed on the roof which is being left behind.  In effect the vendor would be earning an income from part of the property the buyer would now own, just as if I'm selling a field but expect to keep the rental income for it.

A better comparison would be as I said upthread - would you expect a TV costing £800 to be left behind if it were attached to the wall and was there when you viewed the house?

The key issue is whether the installation will be left electrically safe, and contrary to what ThisIsWeird said, I would have concerns whether the removal was leaving the building weatherproof, thermally insulated, and structurally sound.

Unfortunately without pictures there is little assurance forum members can give you on that key point - you need to flag it up as something specific to be looked at when you have the survey done, you need to have a copy of the electrician's sign-off for the removal work, and if the removal happens after your survey then ideally you need the surveyor to go back to confirm all is well.

You could go back and ask to renegotiate the agreed price of the property.  But that comes with risks.  In any event I would wait to see what the survey turns up in terms of defects (with the property generally) and whether you want something knocked off for that, rather than renegotiating over the charging point and then having to go back for a further renegotiation over building defects/repairs.

Thanks for this. I haven't been indulging in particular thought on the vendors. I don't know them from Adam. Nor on who might be to blame for incorrect information, since I can't do anything about that anyway. Except try and find out the right information, as I'm trying to do re. the EV charger here :-) 

My focus is on finding out about, as you say, 'The key issue [of] whether the installation will be left electrically safe', and 'whether the removal was leaving the building weatherproof, thermally insulated, and structurally sound'. I haven't come across this scenario of taking half an EV charger installation from a property before, and my questions have all been about the possible implications of that re. safety, cost, possible future limitations etc.

The survey has already been carried out - I would of course have asked for this to be particularly looked at had I known to do so. The survey report also contains incorrect assumptions about aspects of tenure, because that represented the information which had been given at the time - information which had been very explicitly asked for, which has turned out to be wrong. So there is a wider context in which the EV charger issue resides, and I'm trying to get as much info as I can about all implications before deciding what to do, in various ways. The 'trustworthy' issue is actually quite a significant one overall. 

I appreciate the time taken to offer advice on this; all of which is very pertinent :-) 

pinkshoes

Pendrive said:

Yes - I'm getting my current house ready to put on sale and trying to make sure people will see what they will get. I travelled quite a distance for two viewings and am quite unhappy this issue is only arising now.

So are you actually in a position to proceed with the sale if you haven't put your house on the market? 

Ultimately, the EA didn't know the particulars so had wrongly assumed that they EV charging point was included.

You can either adjust your offer to reflect the cost of putting a new one in (on the basis your accepted offer was before you found out that the EV point wasn't included) or you can accept their is no EV point, but make it clear that you will need documentation showing that an electrician has uninstalled the charging point and made safe the area.

jonnydeppiwish!

Section62 said:

Where opinions are expressed they are not necessarily fact.  Other opinions may differ.  I disagree with jonnydeppiwish! over the use of a qualified electrician.  I wouldn't accept removal of the CP in any circumstances other than a professional electrician either doing the removal, or inspecting the work after the removal has been carried out.  I would want that professional assurance that the system had been correcty isolated and left in safe state, and that the cabling left in-situ hadn't been damaged in a way which made it unusable in future.

.

I don't think jonnydeppiwish! is trying to "blame" you.  I think they are just pointing out what anyone involved in property transactions would say - that if something is really important to you then you need to make sure it is nailed down (in writing), rather than relying on assumptions or what somebody said.

Absolutely not blaming you just trying to explain the responsibility you have to yourself when purchasing.

As @Section62 has said, buying a property is a very emotional thing for many people to do - it’s important to try and keep it just as a transaction.

I will disagree with reference to the electrician doing the work as it’s a straight forward task for a competent DIYer, but that’s my personal opinion.  As a buyer, are you paying for an electrical safety check? That would pick up any issues going forward.

UnderOffer

pinkshoes said:

Pendrive said:

Yes - I'm getting my current house ready to put on sale and trying to make sure people will see what they will get. I travelled quite a distance for two viewings and am quite unhappy this issue is only arising now.

So are you actually in a position to proceed with the sale if you haven't put your house on the market? 

Ultimately, the EA didn't know the particulars so had wrongly assumed that they EV charging point was included.

You can either adjust your offer to reflect the cost of putting a new one in (on the basis your accepted offer was before you found out that the EV point wasn't included) or you can accept their is no EV point, but make it clear that you will need documentation showing that an electrician has uninstalled the charging point and made safe the area.

I wondered this but assume they are proceeding without the need to sell, particularly if they’ve had a survey and are now in receipt of the fixtures and fittings form as appears to be progressing well for someone who might then need to sell and add months to the conveyancing to be able to actually exchange contracts? 

Sarahspangles

OH just sold his parents’ bungalow. The EA asked him if there was anything in particular to mention when showing buyers - e.g the new boiler. At this point OH hadn’t filled out the Property Information Form and as there were some white goods available if the buyer wanted them there was a back and forth when the PIF was issued. I don’t think the EA is the issue in this case - I think it’s the vendors’ decision, but as it’s at a point before contracts are finalised so there’s scope to adjust the price.

Pendrive

Section62 said:

In this case DD would have been asking for written confirmation from the agent that the EV charger point was included in the sale if it was important to you, or making the offer conditional on the EV charger being included.

It wasn't important to me. What is important to me are the possible implications of its being half-uninstalled. My posts have made that clear. This has also happened, however, in a wider context of other incorrect information of rather greater significance having been given to me, so it has a greater bearing in the 'trustworthy' stakes as well.

"Try to focus on whether the property will be left in an appropriate and safe state" - precisely what I am trying to do...

Pendrive

jonnydeppiwish! said:

 Absolutely not blaming you just trying to explain the responsibility you have to yourself when purchasing.

As @Section62 has said, buying a property is a very emotional thing for many people to do - it’s important to try and keep it just as a transaction.

I will disagree with reference to the electrician doing the work as it’s a straight forward task for a competent DIYer, but that’s my personal opinion.  As a buyer, are you paying for an electrical safety check? That would pick up any issues going forward.

With respect there seem to have been a number of incorrect assumptions made. Here we are now with the 'emotional' trope. 

I'm asking about experiences with, and implications of, partial uninstallation of an EV charger currently installed in an exterior wall of a property I am in the process of buying. Which is not the first, by the way. But the EV charger issue is a first for me. Hence my asking. My initial post should have made this clear. I appreciate your comments on this particular issue, which are helpful. If surveyors, electricians or whomever are going to have to be involved, these are among the costs and hassle this uninstallation may cause. It's a full picture of such costs and implications I'm trying to get a full picture of. A survey has already been done, and I could have asked for this issue to have been considered had I been aware at the time. He suggested no electrical check was needed as the house still has some if its NHBC guarantee. 

I don't intend to accept a DIY job being done with this.

Pendrive

UnderOffer said:

pinkshoes said:

Pendrive said:

Yes - I'm getting my current house ready to put on sale and trying to make sure people will see what they will get. I travelled quite a distance for two viewings and am quite unhappy this issue is only arising now.

So are you actually in a position to proceed with the sale if you haven't put your house on the market? 

Ultimately, the EA didn't know the particulars so had wrongly assumed that they EV charging point was included.

You can either adjust your offer to reflect the cost of putting a new one in (on the basis your accepted offer was before you found out that the EV point wasn't included) or you can accept their is no EV point, but make it clear that you will need documentation showing that an electrician has uninstalled the charging point and made safe the area.

I wondered this but assume they are proceeding without the need to sell, particularly if they’ve had a survey and are now in receipt of the fixtures and fittings form as appears to be progressing well for someone who might then need to sell and add months to the conveyancing to be able to actually exchange contracts? 

Sorry - I don't understand your comment, nor how it relates to the EV charger question.

daveyjp

Its not a difficult matter. 

Do you want  the EV charger to be left?  If so do a deal with the vendor for it to be left.
Can you do without it?  If so vendor arranges removal, makes good damage and provides evidence the electrical work has been carried out by a competent person prior to exchange.