Could attic conversion hold up sale?

Mur1983 wrote: »

Hi I am the process of buying a house. It has an attic conversion and at present we have deposit on but no contracts signed. We have being caught out a few times already with trying to buy two previous houses spent loads on legal fees and engineer reports and ended up having to pick another house due to retention issues.

I am now worried that the attic conversion may hold up the sale, I presume it will need a cert of compliance and build regulations cert. I am getting my mortgage from local authority. So I am not even sure they will query the attic conversion. The conversion looks in good condition windows are to the rear and permanent stairs installed. At present can't see it any steel was used to counteract the removed of supporting timbers.

I am worried when it comes to local authority solicitor asking questions at the contract signing stage they may have problem with attic conversion?

Photo of conversion attached

Is it down as a bedroom or a storage area ?????

Mur1983 wrote: »

Advertised as a 4 bedroom house (counting the attic as one bedroom). But we are getting the house at very good price so don't mind it it has to be just used for storage. We only need three bedrooms anyway. Main thing is we can buy the house. We have requested our engineer to look at the attic and our solicitor to query do they have build reg cert for conversion.
If not is it just a matter of someone certifying that the roof structure is secure.

Even if the attic conversion did not require planning permission, it must still comply with Building Regs (must be a certain ceiling height etc). There is no way around these. Anvengineer will tell you if it complies or not. If it does not comply with Building Regs then it cannot be used as a habitable room. This means it should not have been advertised as a bedroom. It doesn't mean that you will have to tear the thing down but it just can't be considered as a bedroom when it is being valued by your lending institution.

If you lending institution valued the property based on it being a 4 bed house then they will have to be informed of the situation if its not Building Reg compliant. Your solicitor has to tell them.

It has nothing to do with the roof being secure (although I hope it is!). It would be the same if you had a small extension out the back- might be exempt from planning permission but must be compliant with Building Regs.

Basically, yes, this kind of thing can hold up a sale but hopefully the engineer will say it is compliant with Building Regs and then you're good to go. By the way, its the seller's responsibility to get the Cert of Compliance so they should be getting their engineer to prepare this not yours. Good idea to get your own guy to look at it though just to be sure.

That is great new. Hope it all goes well for you this time!