Selling Without Building Regulations
If you own a property which does not have a completion certificate for any regulated works, (structural, pipes or services) you will find this effects your ability to sell. This may have been an oversight when you had works completed, or you may have bought the property without a survey and therefore missed uncertified works carried out by the previous owner. Luckily there are four different ways to get around selling a house without building regulations.
Can you sell a house without building regs?
If the works were carried out in accordance with building regulations, you can apply for a regularisation certificate. This is a retrospective inspection or inspections carried out to check whether the work was building regulations compliant. This will give a you and the buyer peace of mind that the works are safe and no action will be taken against them to remedy the uncertified work.
What happens if you don't get building regulations?
If there is a chance that the building work was non-compliant, then a letter of regularisation will not be the best course of action. Option two is indemnity insurance, however, this cannot be obtained if the council are made aware of the non-compliant works, following a failed inspection for a letter of regularisation, for example.
Many people choose this option anyway, as it is relatively cheap and is often enough to appease your buyer if they are primarily concerned with costs. You must receive legal advice on the terms of your indemnity insurance, your conveyancing solicitor can arrange this along with our package for the conveyancing of your transaction.
Bear in mind though, that this does nothing to reassure the buyer that the work was safe. More cautious buyers will be unwilling to purchase without the peace of mind that comes along with a letter of regularisation, and mortgage buyers will not be able to get a mortgage without retrospective building regs or valid indemnity insurance.
It is safest to have a structural engineer assess the work to see whether regularisation is viable and what changes would need to be made to bring it in line with regulations. This way, you can keep indemnity insurance as an option incase the work required is too much for you to achieve before sale.
Our structural engineer will attend the property to inspect the unauthorised works for compliance with Building Regulations - Part A: Structure. This is an intrusive survey. The report will:
- confirm that the works appear compliant and simply need to be signed off by building control;
- outline any works required to make the work structurally compliant before bringing a building control inspector in to grant the letter of regularisation; or
- confirm that the work would need to be completely undone or redone to meet building regulations.
A third option (If neither insurance, nor regularisation are available to you) is to re-do the works at your own expense with proper notification and inspection from building control. If this is not an option either, you may have to market the property to cash buyers only. Cash buyers are not limited by a mortgage lender's criteria, but they will expect a price reduction as a cash buyer, as well as further reductions to cover their costs to re-do the works after purchase.
What building works require building regulations approval? | What building works don't require building regs approval? |
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Caragh is an excellent writer and copy editor of books, news articles and editorials. She has written extensively for SAM for a variety of conveyancing, survey, property law and mortgage-related articles.
