Buying a house with no Planning Permission or Building regs for extension

[Dan]

Hi there another guy in a similar situation

I am looking to buy a 3 bedroom house with a loft conversion. The loft conversion never had any building regs my understanding is that is it is to be a habital space (with stairs) it needs building regs, if its is a loft space (with a retractable ladder) then it does not. The conversion was done by the vendor (he is a builder) but there are no drawings to show the work and it definetly does not comply with todays regs. Any advice?

Thanks

Dan

[joyful117]

Hi,
I'm finding this all very useful. We are due to exchange contracts in 3 weeks and have just found that the vendors haven't got building regs for taking down an external wall to fit a 10ft wide conservatory( they also haven't got french doors between the dining room and conservatory). We are planning to replace the conservatory with a brick extension in a couple of years and would obviously get proper building regs done when we do this work. Our builder has suggested that we ask the vendor to reduce the sale price of the house by £5,000 to cover any possible problems when we have the extension. Does this sound like a sensible option? I'd be grateful for any suggestions.

[monique7832]

Hello everyone,

I see no-one has answered questions posed by junior member bole56 and junior member called ‘keyboard’ on the 4th page of this thread (some time ago now).

A response to those questions (or to this question now that i'm writing it) is of interest to me as I’m considering buying a flat that did not have either of the consents/permissions and I was wondering what the implications would be to me if I bought it and whether there are any indemnities that could be obtained or if I could buy it and then apply for retrospective consents/permissions.

Most of the questions on here relate to extensions or other changes to a property, but I don’t think there has been any response on creation of a flat within a property without consents and permissions.

To complicate matters further, the flat I am looking at has a flat below that did have planning permission for an extension, but rather than building the extension to the existing flat below (which was the top floor flat), the owner squeezed in a separate flat in what should have been the extension so that the new created flat is now the ‘illegal’ top floor flat!

Although you will advise that I should walk away I’m sure, please enlighten me so that I fully understand why. Is it impossible to get indemnity and/or the relevant permissions/consents presuming the seller will not/cannot obtain any of these? In any case the flat is being sold as is.

Would appreciate your feedback

[monique7832]

Thanks for your responses guys... :-)

[Paulk]

Great thread with some extremely valuable insight - I couldn't quite answer my question though, so thought I'd post to see if anyone can help!

We are purchasing a 1960's bungalow. The whole property has a mono-pitch felt roof. It has a 3rd bedroom which was created through a smallish extension - the seller doesn't know when the extension was built (it was before they bought it), and neither seller nor council has record of planning or building regs being met. The seller is providing an indemnity policy, but that doesn't really help me...

I'm not concerned about the planning as that would seem irrelevant now.

When asked, our surveyor has said very little about the extension - he has not highlighted any concerns about the construction, which appears fairly good and inline with the rest of the property.

If we go ahead with the purchase, I would like to obtain building regs sign-off, to protect myself when I come to sell in the future. Is it as 'simple' as ensuring any necessary structural changes are made in line with current regs, and getting it approved? What if the extension was built before 1985?

Edit - sorry - without building regs sign off for the third bedroom, are the agents correct in marketing it as '3 bedrooms'? All this uncertainty is pretty unnerving!

Any guidance or advice appreciated!

Paul

[Richard Webster]

It is always a matter of degree - where is the building reg sign off for the average house built in say 1935?

[Pam]

I am selling a property with a garage conversion without building regs. We have offered the buyers an indemnity but they are saying that this will not be valid once they carry out any work on the property, do you know if this is correct.

Our solicitors are advising that this is not correct but they appear quite incompetent, are you able to help?

Many thanks.

[Paulk]

Hi Pam

I am in the same situation, but from the buyers perspective! As per my post above, we are buying a property with a 3rd bedroom which is an extension, which doesn't have building regs sign off.

In my case, as in the case of your buyer it seems, there is an aspiration to undertake further works (for us it would be a new roof) - and therefore require building control inspectors to visit the site and start poking around...

The concern for the buyer is that they will not only be forking out for the cost of any extension or alteration, but that once the building inspectors get a sniff of the existing works, that we will have to pay for (potentially) costly remedial work to put right those bits which are not inline with requirements.

The other concern is that even if we leave the property as is, that future buyers will raise the same concerns, which will ultimately devalue the property.

Hope that explains it from the buyers side - that is exactly what I am experiencing now!

Paul

[lucylike77]

Hi,

we are in a similar situation as Paulk. The house we are buying has two extensions which were not built at the same time. The first one was likely permitted development but the second one (built about 20 years ago) should have had Planning and BRegs Approval. We are planning to knock down the rear extension to extent out even further and will need to obtain Planning and BRegs approval for that.

Am I right in saying by doing that we would be 'alerting' the council to the fact that the current extensions have no approvals and hence any indemnity insurance taken out by the seller would be invalid?

I would be grateful if anyone could clarify this. Thanks.

Annett