Indemnity insurance

[bernhund]

Long story short. My mum is moving house & the buyer's solicitor has asked my mum for £145 indemnity insurance because she can't produce paperwork for a pair of patio doors that were fitted in 2003 where there was once a window. I can only assume it is to cover the possibility of the council turning up with a notice that it wasn't converted with permission by Planning.
Question is: is that what usually happens when selling with no paperwork for things like this? And does the figure sound right? (He has now suggested he wants more than £145, but I don't know why the sudden increase)

[elanfan]

Tell the solicitor to shove it. Council cannot enforce anything over 4 years ago. If the buyers want an unnecessary indemnity tell them to buy it. It's just another little earner for he solicitor greedy gits

[bernhund]

That's exactly what I thought. Preying on an old lady!

[Murph7355]

Presumably the house isn't listed...

[bernhund]

Murph7355 said:

Presumably the house isn't listed...

No, not listed. Just an ordinary house like 1000s of others, where the window was turned into a door. The doors that were fitted are all kite marked.

[blueg33]

What does the title say? Are there restrictive covenants that apply to this modification? Why was the work done without the requisite consents?

[LFB531]

Agent here! Becoming more and more common. Rules from Council of Mortgage Lenders being applied by conveyancing solicitors to the letter and this is the kind of thing they unearth.

Sometimes, it's easier to just make sure that there's nothing else they're looking at and suck it up. £145 against a house value is fairly insignificant even if it does hurt.

Probably nothing to do with the buyer, it's just the nanny state we live in.

Welcome to my world!

[Gingerbread Man]

I'm selling a house and have had to pay an insurance because the windows and doors don't have a Fensa cert.

[paulwirral]

It's normal practice these days when you don't have any paperwork for windows etc , no ones trying to stitch anyone up .

[MrBen1]

When selling my last house I was asked for similar to do with a forty year old extension. Just said no and that the buyer could buy it if they wanted but I wasn't paying for it.

Depends how much you need the buyer I guess!

[Little Lofty]

Gingerbread Man said:

I'm selling a house and have had to pay an insurance because the windows and doors don't have a Fensa cert.

This

Anything fitted after 2002 needs a Fensa certificate or building regs sign off, if you can't supply one (it might be registered online) then the solicitor will ask for an indemnity, I doubt it's got anything to do with planning as you wouldn't generally need planning for a French door anyway. As mentioned it's pretty common practise to ask for all these docs now, it's part of the reason why it now takes months rather than weeks to sell a buy/sell a house.

[AC43]

LFB531 said:

Agent here! Becoming more and more common. Rules from Council of Mortgage Lenders being applied by conveyancing solicitors to the letter and this is the kind of thing they unearth.

Sometimes, it's easier to just make sure that there's nothing else they're looking at and suck it up. £145 against a house value is fairly insignificant even if it does hurt.

Probably nothing to do with the buyer, it's just the nanny state we live in.

Welcome to my world!

+1

Had loads of this bollx on the last one I sold (June 2016). The buyer's solicitor wound my my buyer right up about it. Could have done without the agg.

Suck it up and move on.

[8-P]

Shame she mentioned there had once been a window there and now it was patio doors. I know of someone erm who had this, but nobody picked it up in the entire process.

[bernhund]

Thanks for your input so far. I think she is/was prepared to pay the £145, albeit reluctantly, just to move on. But then the price of the indemnity was going to increase, the reason why I don't know. That's when she got the hump and thought they're just going to find more & more ways of taking money off her for nothing.