Is a regularisation certificate required or important?

Is a regularisation certificate required or important?

11:20 AM, 13th February 2017, About 7 years ago 12

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I am in the process of buying an Edwardian House with a loft room. The loft room was done back in 1994 by the current sellers, there is a permanent staircase installed, the room has a roof window, is carpeted and has a central heating.loft

The house is being sold as a 4-bedroom house not including the loft room. When I viewed the house, the sellers advised that they use the loft room as an office room. I am now midway through the process, got a mortgage offer and all searches came back, but it has just appeared that the sellers do not have the building regulations completion certificate for the loft room. My solicitors has asked them to get a regularisation certificate from the council, but they are unwilling to do so because they it will take a lot of time to get the certificate and they may lose out on their upper chain purchase.

They also say that they believe that the regularisation certificate is not needed because the loft room is not a habitable space, and they now started to say that in fact they only use it as a loft storage so it is not a room at all. They have offered to give me an indemnity policy instead.

I am really worried about it now. I absolutely love the house, it fits all boxes for me and I really don’t want to lose it. But my solicitor insists that the certificate is needed because the works have been done to loft and to the roof and the fact that the room is stated to be not a habitable room does not matter. I am also worried that I will be moving into a house parts of which may happen to not comply with the building regs, and I won’t have any money left after the purchase to rectify any problem that may happen as a result. I also have a toddler and that makes me feel even more uneasy about buying something that may be non-building regs compliant. But I do want this house so much!

Is there anything I can do with this situation? Can I ask for an indemnity to cover any works requested by the council (if any) to issue the regularisation certificate? Or may be anything else?

Thank you so much in advance!

Natasha


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Comments

John

22:26 PM, 13th February 2017, About 7 years ago

I am interested in this. I sold my last house 9 yrs ago and the loft space couldn't be classed as a bedroom because the stairs didn't meet regs fully, i think from memory. I bought the house 7 yrs previous and the owners had the loft converted. It was all done correctly, but i didn't have any paper work. The issue was the room couldn't officially be classed as a bedroom, but really anyone could tell it was in a good state.

I sold the house with no issues.

Fast forward to today and reading this and i wonder if the requirements for more paper work connected with the history of a house is now causing these stumbling blocks.

I would say they are not trying to mug you off if they have stated the room is not classed as a bedroom.

This is a potential bargaining tool, but if the house is lovely and priced right, go for it.

I would speak to the owners about how they went about converting the space though. Maybe get an engineer to interview about the build process. In 1994 regs on energy saving were less stringent.

Jamie M

23:54 PM, 13th February 2017, About 7 years ago

Never ever be a desperate buyer, you're just buying someone elses problems

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