Selling A House Without Building Regulations

[Tobydog22]

I am just near the stage of exchanging on my house sale and my buyers solicitor has flagged no build regs on an extension built 8 years ago, although planning was obtained. Unfortunately prior to putting our house for sale we contacted the council to see if we needed sign off to sell. This would seem has now made it impossible for us to get the indemnity for the work. Our buyers solicitor has referred back to their lender to see if they are willing to lend on our property. Has anyone had experience of this as we as concerned about loosing our sale, simply through enquiries made to the council earlier this year. Thanks for any help.

[woofgang]

Not personally but the same thing happened to my neighbour for the same reason. They had to get the extension surveyed and get confirmation that it was in compliance. In the event, it wasn't and they had to demolish it and rebuild. Sorry, that probably wasn't what you wanted to hear.

[aintgotaclue]

We had this problem with an extension we had but we applied for a Certificate of Lawfulness and it was granted. You may not have much success because this was 12 years ago but you could at least try.

[Tobydog22]

Thank you both. We have remortgaged on our property twice since the building work was done and had no issue. It's frustrating that if we had been a bit cuter and not contacted the council for advise we would have had no issue and simply got the indemnity.

[woofgang]

Surely if its built to spec you should have no problem? lesson here is get the building regs cert done when you build!

[Sycamore3House]

This may be helpful. I bought a property in 2003 that had a conservatory to the rear that did not have planning permission. Apparently you need permission if if backs onto a main road which it does or did the house is in a village in Cornwall and the road was the A30 but 20 odd years previously before the dual carriageway was built.
Instead of applying for planning permission as it had been in place for approx 3-4 years we were given some sort of insurance policy by the seller to cover an eventuality should the council ask for it to be knocked down. Maybe worth a try at something similar. I have not yet had any correspondence from the council and The conservatory is still standing.

[woofgang]

Planning permission is different from building regs though....

[boxtops]

People we know had an attic converstion done that didn't have building regs approval - they're going to have to strip it out.

[themas]

The rules for planing permission & building regs. are quite different. I don't understand why your enquiry to the Council has anything to do with this because the buyer's solicitor should have asked for building regs. documents anyway. Nor do I understand how it came about that you got planning permission but no building regs. The normal Council procedure would be for the planning dept. to notify building control, who then make sure they do the necessary inspections etc. If this was not done, you might have a case to complain about maladministration.

The fact that you made the enquiry makes me wonder whether you had some reason for thinking there might be a problem.

Unless you have a comeback against the Council as indicated above, I suspect all you can do now - if the buyer's lender won't give a mortgage - is try to get retrospective building regs. That may be difficult/expensive depending on the nature of the extension, & if it doesn't comply you have a serious problem.