comfort note

sineadgraham

i bought my current house last january.Done all the work required ie survey,lawyers as you do.There was a problem the day we were supposed to move.Basically, the family who bought our old house challenged us by disputing the patio doors. Now the patio doors in question were in place before we even bought the house.We were told that our lawyers held the comfort note regarding them.However this turned out to be untrue as another set of lawyers held the note and it never went into our file.Our lawyer retained £500 of our money until the comfort note was received.Surely all of this would be in the survey when i first bought the house and why hasn't any lawyers checked this.So im £500 out of pocket due to someone's stupidity.

Doozergirl

Your buyers bought the house caveat emptor. If they exchanged contracts without checking whatever warranty with relation to the patio doors, then they can't argue about it. If they didn't exchange and made it a condition of sale (pathetic actually) then..

You can either prove that there is no FENSA certificate needed for the patio door (if it was installed pre 1st April 2002 it needs NOTHING unless it's a conservation area and that sort of issue), get building regs to approve the door if it was fitted post 2002 or you buy an indemnity policy yourself (assume this is what you are referring to as a comfort note) and you'll get at least £300 of your money back.

To answer your question about when you bought the house; the doors aren't really an issue. If a structural wall were knocked through and they were installed within building regs, in fact, even if they weren't, after a year, there is nothing that anyone can do to ask you to remove them, unless they're blatantly unsafe and building control decide to take you to court. They can't simply demand if it's more than a year old.

If they are glazed and they were installed post 1st April 2002 then they should have either building regs approval or a FENSA certificate provided through the fitters. Again, if they've been in for more than a year, there's nowt anyone is going to do so even an indemnity policy isn't worth the paper it's printed on because the chance of someone chasing you is almost nil.

Indemnity, comfort note, all rubbish really. You just need to be happy it's structurally sound. It just seems that more and more things arise these days and the way to deal with it is buying a policy rather than addressing the issue by either resolving it or proving that it doesn't exist.

silvercar

Our lawyer retained £500 of our money until the comfort note was received.

So once the comfort note was received, you should have received the £500 back. Why didn't this happen?

sineadgraham

silvercar wrote: »

So once the comfort note was received, you should have received the £500 back. Why didn't this happen?

As far as we are aware the comfort note was never given to our lawyers.contacted my lawyer today and she hasn't gotten back to me yet.

sineadgraham

You can either prove that there is no FENSA certificate needed for the patio door (if it was installed pre 1st April 2002 it needs NOTHING unless it's a conservation area and that sort of issue), get building regs to approve the door if it was fitted post 2002 or you buy an indemnity policy yourself (assume this is what you are referring to as a comfort note) and you'll get at least £300 of your money back.

To answer your question about when you bought the house; the doors aren't really an issue. If a structural wall were knocked through and they were installed within building regs, in fact, even if they weren't, after a year, there is nothing that anyone can do to ask you to remove them, unless they're blatantly unsafe and building control decide to take you to court. They can't simply demand if it's more than a year old.

If they are glazed and they were installed post 1st April 2002 then they should have either building regs approval or a FENSA certificate provided through the fitters. Again, if they've been in for more than a year, there's nowt anyone is going to do so even an indemnity policy isn't worth the paper it's printed on because the chance of someone chasing you is almost nil.

Indemnity, comfort note, all rubbish really. You just need to be happy it's structurally sound. It just seems that more and more things arise these days and the way to deal with it is buying a policy rather than addressing the issue by either resolving it or proving that it doesn't exist.[/quote]

The doors were installed before april 1st 2002.Doors were structurally sound when we vacated the property:T

silvercar

The doors were installed before april 1st 2002.Doors were structurally sound when we vacated the property

Then no-one should have agreed to a retention.

sineadgraham

would just like to say thankd to all who replied to my post and this issue over the comfort note has finally been resolved with my lawyers.£500 will be back in my hands this week.:j:T