Loft conversion

yoshiyella

Good afternoon,

 We’re selling our 2 bed property that has a loft conversion (not listed as a 3rd bedroom).

 Buyers mortgage valuation has come back with a valuation of £0 due to the loft conversion and to provide one of two documents.

 We’ve owned the property over 10 years and wasn’t done by the previous owner either.

 At the time we were told as it’s not being sold as a 3 bedroom house that it was just a conversion and wouldn’t need building regulations/planning permission as it wasn’t being cleared as a living space.

 We’re not sure what we need to do or if this is an easily rectified situation.

 Any advice/help would be much appreciated

Scotbot

Loft conversions don't require planning permission but they must meet building control regulations and have a completion certificate. 

As you don't have one there are 2 options 
i) You can offer to get indemnity insurance.  This is cheap but may not satisfy  the lender

ii)Get a regularisation  certificate. This is expensive and time consuming and may not be possible as you don’t know when the work was done. To find out you need to talk to the planning department at your local Council but if you do you cannot get indemnity insurance. 

So try for indemnity insurance first. To get this you need to talk to your solicitor.

yoshiyella

We bought the house in 2014 - should we have got a certificate as part of that purchase? We bought with a mortgage. Neither of us recall this being brought up at that tone.

We’re trying to locate the files we had the time but all our things are in storage and we used House Network which are now out of business

yoshiyella

Could contacting our mortgage provider be of any help/use?

Scotbot

yoshiyella said:

We bought the house in 2014 - should we have got a certificate as part of that purchase? We bought with a mortgage. Neither of us recall this being brought up at that tone.

We’re trying to locate the files we had the time but all our things are in storage and we used House Network which are now out of business

 Who knows, that was 10 years ago and  lenders requirements can change. Your mortgage provider is unlikely to have documents from that far back. I would start with your solicitor, if they can get an indemnity policy that the buyers lender is OK with that is the easiest fix

yoshiyella

When you say start with the solicitor - do you mean our one that we’re using to sell the property or the one we bought the property with?

 Thanks again

Scotbot

yoshiyella said:

When you say start with the solicitor - do you mean our one that we’re using to sell the property or the one we bought the property with?

 Thanks again

The one you are selling with.

yoshiyella

Thank you!!

 The mortgage provider for the buyer is Nationwide - have you had any experience with them and this sort of thing?

user1977

It’s not likely to be a lender-specific thing, they all follow the same standard instructions to solicitors. Just talk to your solicitor.