Buying a house with loft conversion, but no building reg certificate...

My house has a non-signed-off attic conversion. Was such when we bought it. House was sold as a 4-bed (which excludes the attic), and we paid 4-bed prices.

Valuer got a bit confused and flagged the room as something we should check for building reg issues. This caused the solicitor to worry that we needed to get a copy of regs - had to reassure that we knew it didn't have regs, that it wasn;t supposed to be a bedroom, and that the surveyor had ****** up - he had to revisit to asses the proper number of bedrooms and, whilst he was there, correctly count the number of bathrooms. He must have been an utter moron, frankly.

Previous owners had used it as a bedroom at one point, but we just have it as a play room for the kids. It has a proper staircase. Fireproofing might be an issue - it's two plasterboard walls between us and the neighbour (presumably no separation at all when it was built circa 1905).
 
I have done similar, bought a 2 bed house with an attic conversion 11 years ago and sold it last year.

We had to take out indemnity insurance when selling (About £120 if I remember correctly) and all was fine. This again was classed as a storage room and I used it as a study but had a futon there for guests.

What has your solicitor concluded on the matter, they should be able to give the best advice.
 
Hamzter said:
Don't know anything on the legal side, but I bought a place back in 2010 with a non-approved loft conversion (it was a bargain :)), and spent a good while stripping it out and redoing it myself to get building control approval, so I know a fair bit on the construction side.

The reality is that it's unlikely to be something small that can be rectified to gain approval, it usually requires significant modification or stripping completely. There's a handful of major requirements people usually fail to meet so go with the easy non-approved route...
  • Floor structure - new joists/steels required , which can take away an unacceptable amount of headroom.
  • Stairs - there are requirements on angle, head height etc. that can be difficult to meet.
  • Fire protection - As well as the loft itself, there must be a fire protected stairwell to a ground floor exit, again often not possible (e.g. stairwells opening into living rooms)
  • Fire egress - There has to be a window which can be accessed with a ladder, roof structure often prevents this
It's likely one or more of these it fails on, some councils are flexible however, e.g. I've heard of the fire egress requirements being dropped in exchange for increasing fire resistance from 30 minutes to 60 minutes.

FYI it cost me about £13k (and a lot of time) to sort my house, I would expect ~£20k if I paid someone to do it, that's for a 6x6m conversion.
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As a structural engineer who has done Building Regs compliant loft conversions to accomodate a bedroom, it will be done to a higher standard to meet the points quoted. And that does have a cost implication which some people may not be willing to pay. As others have said, as long as it's advertised appropriately, shouldn't be an issue.
 
Well, it turns out that the mortgage lender has refused to grant the mortgage now, so the decision has been taken out of our hands.

I'm equally disappointed and relieved. We really want the house, but do not want to give ourselves the headache of problems when we come to sell it.

Just waiting to hear back from the vendors on the matter. No idea whether they will simply try to sell the house to someone else, or do the work and sell it to us.

The problem they will have is that the loft conversion is now officially on the books as "refused certificate", so they will struggle to sell to anyone else I'd have thought...
 
Luckily, we're friendly with the vendors and they invited us round together with their builder.

They agree that they need to fix the issue whether they sell it to us or someone else, so it's actually sounding positive.

Expecting to hear back from them soon to go and take a look at the finished work. If we're happy, we'll get the mortgage company to reissue, which they will if the work is signed off, and we'll go ahead.

Glad we forced their hand in getting the building work done!

Keep you updated...
 
Nope.

Vendor paid for the work and we kept at the original asking price.

After they realised others would struggle to get a mortgage with the building control refusal, they realised they had to do it even if we pulled out of the deal.

It's still only certified as a storage room, but that's fair enough because it was advertised as such.

We're very friendly with the vendors - they're kinda like an older version of my wife and I!
 
Great to hear it's all ended well! Was strange when we bought our place, never spoke with nevermind met the vendors!
 
tom_nieto said:
If it’s accurately reflected in the asking price then I don’t really see the problem. Similarly if you come to sell this can be reflected in your selling price. If you’re pricing the place as if it were a 4 bed then you’ll put people off.

The problems arise if you’re trying to pass it off as a bedroom without building regs. If it’s occasional use or storage then it doesn’t really matter. It all depends on the area and whether you have the money or the need to get it up to scratch.
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Edit: didn't read to the end before quoting...
 
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