"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...

I asked someone in my office who moved recently what was asked of
them, and the solicitor's question about Building Regs specifically
only asked only about 'structural' work and underground drains IIRC,
and not about anything else which might require Building Regs approval.

I think there are a variety of editions of the 'standard' form around in
use - and some solicitors ask great lists of additional questions. Some of
the 'standard' forms around mention 'in the last four years' for building
work, some don't.

I have a copy of a 'seller's property information form (2nd edition)' (I
think produced by the Law Society, as part of it's 'Transaction'
methodology), and that asks if you've done any of the following:

a. Building works (inluding loft conversions and conservatories)
b. Change of use
c. Sub-division
d. Conversion
e. Business Activities
f. Window replacement [spot the afterthought - isn't this part of 'a'?]

In a subsequent section it then asks you to declare if you obtained
planning/building regs permission for any of the above.

The form I'm looking at was filled in about a year ago (incorrectly, of
course) by the seller of the house I'm now in. I'm pretty sure that the one
I filled in for the house I sold around the same time was identical.
My buyers' solicitor also produced a vast list of her own additional
questions (precisly what the Transaction protocol was supposed to avoid),
one of which was a very open-ended query about *any* work which had been
done.

I suspect that in general what you actually get asked is, at a minimum, the
stuff on the standard seller's information form, plus something related to
the diligence of the buyer's solicitor.

As there are people posting on the group at the moment who seem to have
managed to buy houses without even knowing who owns the road access to them,
it would appear that there is a wide range of diligence exhibited by buyers'
solicitors...

As to whether writing 'not known' across the 'yes/no' tick-boxes would cause
a sale to collapse, I couldn't say. I'd certainly wonder what was going on
when I saw it, though.

Will