Staircase Height / Building Regs

friddela · 21 Jul 2020 at 10:35

I'm currently house hunting and visited a house today that I like a lot.

The one big issue I have is that the height between the stairs and ceiling is clearly less than 2 metres. Im 6'2" and have to duck a fair bit to fit under. Its not as if its just scraping my head either, my head hits square on with the ceiling. This would cause big issues with potential furniture etc and just a daily nuisance.

Just wondering if anything can be done with regards to building regulations? The owner has increased the size of the upstairs front room making the gap smaller. Can you make conditional offers to get it fixed or would it be a case of offering under and fixing myself.

Cheers!

thezappa · 21 Jul 2020 at 12:59

When was the work done?
You could ask for them to apply for retrospective sign off if the work wasn’t originally signed off but I would put money on them not doing it, mostly because you don’t need approval when altering existing stairs. It depends when work they did at the time and whether that need sign off.
It would be easier (for you) to secure the house and alter the ceiling yourself.

friddela · 21 Jul 2020 at 13:21

thezappa said:
When was the work done?
You could ask for them to apply for retrospective sign off if the work wasn’t originally signed off but I would put money on them not doing it, mostly because you don’t need approval when altering existing stairs. It depends when work they did at the time and whether that need sign off.
It would be easier (for you) to secure the house and alter the ceiling yourself.

Recently. He bought the house in January with the intention of living in it but got denied planning permission (not needed for me).

He had to extend the front bedroom to make it big enough that he could advertise as a 3 bed rather than 2.

thezappa · 21 Jul 2020 at 13:42

Ah, so he’s move some internal walls around by the sounds of it. In any case he wouldn’t need sign off for it.
Honestly, it shouldn’t be a difficult thing to change by a competent builder (or yourself if you’re handy) so I doubt you’d be able to negotiate any meaningful amount off the price based purely on that.