Granny Flat and no planning

R

rebelhead

Registered User
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Hi people,
I have recently put a deposit on a house which was advertised as having a habitable granny flat. This was a detached garage converted. After my engineer did his report it was discovered that not only did vendor not have planning for granny flat but he did not have planning for garage which was above exemption limit. Vendor is now applying for retention but here is the problem, the retention is for garage only. He has already been told he will never get retention for granny flat as it is detached from house and does not meet building regs.
My question for ye is what should I be looking to reduce the purchase price by as the auctioneer falsely advertised the property of having a granny flat. If I ever sell I will never be able to advertise a granny flat, it will have to be sold as a garage conversion. Basically what is the monetary difference between garage with conversion and a granny flat with planning permission?
Or is there any difference?
 
No planning = no purchase. What does your solicitor advise? It's not the EA's job to check planning permissions, besides the EA works for the seller.
 
Definitely no purchase until retention planning is got. Solicitor advise is to wait for planning and look for reduction due to house not being sold as advertised. Sorry if I didnt clarify, engineer was hired by me to do a survey on house prior to contracts. Holding deposit is paid but contracts not signed. I dont think there will be any issue with vendor getting planning for garage its just he sold it as a granny flat.
 
rebelhead said:
Basically what is the monetary difference between garage with conversion and a granny flat with planning permission?
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How long is a piece of string? Impossible to know without knowing the exact details and specification of the house and garage.

If it was me, I'd walk away.
 
If they get retention for the garage as a garage, then value the house based on the going rate for a house that size in the area with a garage. This is likely to be significantly less that a house with a self-contained granny flat.

Make sure your engineer goes over the rest of the place with a fine tooth comb if you are still interested.
 
Thanks for the comments guys. We love the house and granny flat was a "nice to have" but not essential to our purchase. Just pee'd off that when we viewed the house the estate agent confirmed there was planning only to find out after paying for an engineer there was none. Leo as you recommend ill get a valuation of just a garage and go from there.
 
There's a very good lesson in that, never trust an EA, particularly one who is being paid to extract as much money out of you as possible!
 
Leo said:
There's a very good lesson in that, never trust an EA, particularly one who is being paid to extract as much money out of you as possible!
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Leo, it's not so much trust as more ethics. EA falsely advertised house without having all his info correct. Surely it's common practice for an EA to ask a vendor whether there is any planning issues before putting a house up on the market. Or am I just being naive.
 
"Or am I just being naive."

I'm afraid that is your answer.

It is the vendor who is at fault here.

For what it's worth, when you are a purchaser, you do need to become a mini expert on planning. Question any changes, additions, alterations. Most important, ask for planning paperwork as early as possible and always before sending out the engineer.

mf
 
Spot on from MF1. A house is a very significant purchase, with a lot of potential for problems both during the purchase and down the road, particularly with the low quality of a lot of the Irish housing stock. It's in your interest to inform yourself as much as possible prior to proceeding with a purchase and paying for your own advice in terms of legal/ structural/ compliance issues.
 
Do you want or might you want a granny flat? If you do, then walk away from this house.

Do you want a garage? If so, then value this house as it would be with a garage. Then reduce the price further by converting it from a granny flat to a garage. A granny garage is no use to anyone.

But you should do that negotiation now and not wait until the planning is received. If you can't agree a price, then you may have wasted a few months waiting for the planning permission to come through.

Presumably the lender's valuer will make some significant reduction for the unauthorised Granny Garage. Bear that in mind in case your financing falls through.

Brendan
 
How big is the granny flat?
If it is under the exempted limits for a domestic shed, and remember that's all it is without the benefit of PP, then that's what you have to price it at.

You may not need planning regularisation on the shed if it is under 25Sq. m and the private open space is above 25 Sq. m and the heights of the shed conform to the exempted rules, 3m for a flat roof and 4m for a pitched roof.
 
Rebelhead please keep us updated as have a friend in exact same situation only she went ahead with sale before realising her purchase not fully compliant...although she is not going to sell in near future She is in process of rectifying suitation and has spoke to county planner. Planning will most probably granted for garage build but change of use to granny flat in doubt. Granny flat been there for over 12 years so still have high hopes.
 
I own a house with a garage I converted into a granny flat. No planning. Same as every second house in the estate. If I ever sell I'll just sell it as a house with a garage. If I were the OP I would price my offer based on it being a house with a granny flat. As far as I know they cannot make you change it after 12 years, but they will not give you retention for it. With the way the housing crisis is going if they even dreamed of going after all the granny flats out there it would be pandamonium, in any case as far as I know they can not.

I often see ads for houses with granny flats, and I'd say 90% of them don't have planning. It's particularly prevailent in University towns etc.
 
angelmcm said:
Rebelhead please keep us updated as have a friend in exact same situation only she went ahead with sale before realising her purchase not fully compliant...although she is not going to sell in near future She is in process of rectifying suitation and has spoke to county planner. Planning will most probably granted for garage build but change of use to granny flat in doubt. Granny flat been there for over 12 years so still have high hopes.
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Hi angelmcm,

The latest is that, as we were not getting a granny flat as advertised, we decided to reduce our offer by 5% (which I thought was very reasonable). The vendor would not budge any bit stating that by the time the planning permission comes through, the value will have gone up by 5%. We have since pulled out of the deal and got our deposit back.
Our engineer has stated that a garage not attached to a house is very unlikely to ever get planning. There should be no problem getting planning for a garage.
After this mess, the EA has since stated that he will be using an engineer in the future to check for planning issues prior to putting houses on the market. If he's telling truth or not, God knows, as he has'nt been very sincere so far.
We are gutted but plenty more fish in the sea as they say....
 
Thanks so much for the update, so sorry it didn't work out for ye.
The vendor I think has made a mistake..
Best of luck with the house hunting. It was not meant to be !
 
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