Unexpected report of flooding on property info form

lincroft1710

There is nothing you can do about it. You now know not to store anything which would be damaged by water directly on to the cellar floor.


If you buy the house and you are able to cure the cellar of water ingress, then when you come to sell you can truthfully say it does not flood.

EssexHebridean

There is one more possibility here - and that is that the seller originally said "just a bit of a puddle" to you because they didn't ant to scare off a buyer, but now their solicitor has given them the forms and said "fill these in honestly and to the best of your knowledge" and they have suddenly decided that perhaps it *was* a bit more than a short-lived puddle, after all.... As you say, you don't know. what you could do is explain the situation as it was described to you to your solicitor, and say that in your view that wouldn't constitute "flooding" in the sense that the TA6 means, and could they ask the seller's solicitor to speak with their client to establish whether that was ticked "yes" in error. Errors do happen, and it gives the seller a chance to be honest one way or the other - either that yes, it was ticked in error, or indeed yes, that they fibbed to you a bit originally. 

ian1246

Have you done the calculations for how much water that actually represents? There are pond volume calculators available on Google.

A 1inch depth across a 4x5 metre room comes out to 109.99 uk gallons of water, as an example. A standard British Bath holds around 80 to put thar in perspective.

Think I'd want a bit more info in your shoes - over what period of time did this 1inch flood appear? You mentioned a river nearby - what's your basements height vs. The river when it's actually in flood? Our local River - The River Wye - can rise by over 4-5 metres!!

Is it possible your future basement is, infact, experiencing flooding from the river, rather than "damp"?

NervyBuyer

user1977 said:

NervyBuyer said:

I'd be happy to hear otherwise 

You don't sound happy! A damp cellar is not "flooding".

Future conditional tense.

I'm not sure you're quite getting my concern - I know what they described verbally isn't considered 'flooding'. Ticking yes to the 'flooding' box doesn't necessarily tell the same story.

NervyBuyer

EssexHebridean said:

There is one more possibility here - and that is that the seller originally said "just a bit of a puddle" to you because they didn't ant to scare off a buyer, but now their solicitor has given them the forms and said "fill these in honestly and to the best of your knowledge" and they have suddenly decided that perhaps it *was* a bit more than a short-lived puddle

Bingo - this is what I was getting at. Even if not that the vendor has reassessed, but that future purchasers might see the description of the incident as a positive spin on something more alarming.

Solicitor says not to phone and are very difficult to get hold of...

NervyBuyer

Thanks for the other comments, that has given me food for thought beyond the paperwork!

TheJP

Your 'user name' tells me maybe you should not buy a house!

EssexHebridean

NervyBuyer said:

EssexHebridean said:

There is one more possibility here - and that is that the seller originally said "just a bit of a puddle" to you because they didn't ant to scare off a buyer, but now their solicitor has given them the forms and said "fill these in honestly and to the best of your knowledge" and they have suddenly decided that perhaps it *was* a bit more than a short-lived puddle

Bingo - this is what I was getting at. Even if not that the vendor has reassessed, but that future purchasers might see the description of the incident as a positive spin on something more alarming.

Solicitor says not to phone and are very difficult to get hold of...

Email, mark it urgent, and stress in the first paragraph that the question you are about to raise *might*. Are a difference on whether you proceed. Ask for a response in 48 hours (acknowledging that you aren’t including any weekend time in there). If you don’t have a response in that timescale, give it another half a day then phone and politely explain that you really need to have a conversation now as things are time critical and a previously sent email has garnered no response. That way you stay within the realms of being entirely reasonable, while also standing your ground. If you came through to my switchboard with that reaction I would be fighting your corner to get you through to someone! 

Bigphil1474

Just a query really, but who gets to see the TA6 form? I thought it was just between the seller and buyer, and obviously their respective solicitors see it, but do they retain it as part of the whole sale of the property record bundle? If not, who is to say what it ever said in the first place?

NervyBuyer

TheJP said:

Your 'user name' tells me maybe you should not buy a house!

Ha, I do feel like this! I am actually close to giving up for now. I have bought 2 houses before (but never sold), those were easy. This time round it's much harder (peversely, because there is more choice - previously I was buying in an incredibly quick, rising market so there wasn't time to worry or you'd end up with nothing).