Almost a BISF House Owner
Hi all, We are also in the process of buying a BISF house and have found this to be an extremely useful website to gain information and make the process of purchasing a non traditional constructed house less scary.
Today the solicitor has come back saying the property doesn’t have a PRC certificate and seem to be trying to warn us off buying this house because of it, saying that we will struggle to sell it in the future!!
I have tried to do a bit of research and by what I can gather the PRC certificates were required for defective houses (Prefab?) and that a BISF house does not require this. Does anybody have experience of this or ahead this come up in their house purchase? It seems the Halifax isn’t requiring it, it is just the solicitor so it seems the mortgage will go through without it but I obviously don’t want to just go ahead if these houses needed them.
Any advice or experience will be greatly appreciated, we will be doing the seemingly common refurbishment but don’t want to be hit with structural problems as well.
Thanks in advance
Keri
Hi Keri
Grangey is 100% correct. A PRC certificate is required for properties that were constructed out of Pre Cast Reinforced Concrete. A large number of these properties were built Post-War and have now been classed as defective under the Housing Act. As a direct result of this the Government made grants available so that owners could repair these properties to a satisfactory standard and many Mortgage companies will not lend on a PRC house unless a certificate has been issued.
PRC houses suffered from what is described as concrete cancer. Chemicals in the concrete caused the steel reinforcements of the concrete to decay making many buildings unstable.
A BISF House is NOT a PRC House and neither has the BISF House ever been classed as defective under the housing act.
As Grangey says your Solicitor clearly does not have an understanding of what type of house you are intending to buy, This may be due to the fact that your surveyor may also not be aware that your property is a BISF House as many often wrongly classify them as PRC construction. Sadly this type of error occurs all too frequently and is simply caused by lack of knowledge in the area of BISF construction.
Please keep us informed regarding the outcome. :)
Marc
Hi Keri
You are completely right with your thoughts. PRC repair certificates are for prefabricated houses on the defective list of which BISF houses are not. The solicitors clearly are not well educated with this type of property so maybe just saw the word “prefabricated” somewhere and jumped to an assumption.
I hope the rest of your sale goes smoothly! :)