Retention Planning Permission - Certificate of Compliance

CASEsensitive

Hi,

We are trying to purchase a house in the country at the moment and we've run into an issue associated with retention planning especially for septic tanks four times now and just wondering have people experience with solicitors or banks and has it been handled differently.

In the properties we have viewed they have applied for retention planning for septic tanks, which have been approved with the standard conditions. However, the vendor doesn't want to do the work installing the new system themselves, some say they will reduce the cost from the price others say you can upgrade when you buy. Now our solicitor says he will need a cert of compliance with the retention confirming the work has been carried out otherwise he won't sign off.

Does this mean that potentially only cash buyers can purchase these properties? If we negotiated a significant reduction in the advertised price to allow us to carry out the work first thing would it change the banks / solicitors opinion?

Metric Tensor

Although the retention has been granted it is only granted subject to the changes being made (which have not been made) so any professional giving an opinion of compliance would have to note non compliance for this reason.

I honestly don't know if all banks and solicitors would treat this in the same way. I have two thoughts.

a. Maybe your solicitor and the bank would be satisfied if you signed a legal undertaking to get the work done within 6 months of purchase?

b. You need to get a large reduction in the price as this will cost more than you expect. Basically you would need to get a few quotes and add a contingency to them. This might scare the vendor into doing it themselves.

BryanF

Best case you get 3 prices for doing the work and factor the amount into mortgage
And factor the cost (& of your cheeky request a reduction for risk/hassle ) into the sale price

CASEsensitive

Double checked with the bank again and the mortgage adviser who double checked with head office The phrase they used was that would not look favorably on granting a mortgage where there was no certificate of compliance even with a reduction in price, i.e no.

I spoke to the auctioneer again in relation to one of the houses with the issue and they said the opinion from their architect was that everything should be ok as they had flagged it when we viewed the property, in the mean time bidding has gone €30k over the asking price. They said current highest bidder is not a cash buyer so I wonder will or how the sale will go through or how half the country who have septic tanks are getting sales through.

Metric Tensor

I think you might be misunderstanding the reason for the retention. It was applied for because something to do with the septic tanks did not comply with the original planning permission granted.

There are plenty* of septic tank and percolation systems that are compliant with planning and for which a certificate of planning compliance is totally achievable.


I was going to say "the majority" but anecdotal evidence would say otherwise!