Completion certificate for whole house

[deepali]

Hi. I'm a first time buyer in the process of buying a house built in 2002. A garage conversion to study was undertaken in 2005. Our solicitor has raised the concern that the Building Completion Certificate (for the entire house) is missing. Funnily enough they have the completion certificate for the Garage conversion.

Seller has contacted the council to retrieve the certificate. Council has searched their archive couple of times but came up with nothing. They believe it's misplaced or never have been done. Seller says council has declined to do a retrospective inspection as the property is 14year old. Instead council will issue a letter stating "no enforcement action" will be taken.

We have done a full building survey of the house independently and the report states no problem and house is in good state.

Our concern is we may face issues while selling the house as just like us new buyers will be nervous about not having the certificate. Is this going to be an issue? What are the risks we should consider before buying.

 

[tony1851]

There is a saying that, for a house, legal defects are the only defects which get better over time.
Building Control for the house may have been done by private inspectors, and if so, they may have ommitted to forward the Certificate - it happens frequently.
You want to buy the house, it's been given a clean bill of health structurally, so in practice there's no real problem.
If you sell in 5-years time, lack of a Certificate will be even less important.