Buying House

[tmrt84]

Hi there

I am after a bit of advice.

I have bought a house and on Friday we completed. On Saturday we went down to start working on the house ready to move into it and my partner noticed that the Central Heating system has not been installed properly- it is not connected to the plumbing system at all.

I was wondering where we stand in respect of getting the work done? can we compalin to the estate agents as they have sold us a house with 'gas central heating system' but as it is not instaled completeley I dont think they should be allowed to say that and the house was empty before we bought it so there was no gas supply therefore we could not test it when we went to view. Aparet from that, if you see a boiler system in place and radiators plumed in you would assume the work has been completed

What is making me even angrier is that the previous owner of the house is actually one of the estate agents (they used to rent it out). It seems calculating that they have knowingly mis sold us the property.

If there is nothing we can do about the repairs is there an estate agent 'watchdog' we can make a formal compalint to because apart from this we have received a shoddy service from the estate agents.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Ethel]

Did you have a full survey? The surveyor should have picked this up.

Contact your solicitor who dealt with the sale and see what s/he says.

[Maggimae]

As Ethel said, your surveyor should have picked up on this. If not, many solicitors will raise the question as to whether the central heating system is installed and working properly in their preliminary enquiries. Ask your solicitor if they made any enquiries in this regard. Estate Agents are not allowed to mispresent a property but also there is an onus on the buyer to adequately check any aspect as quite often there is no comeback after the purchase has completed - hence the expression "buyer beware".

[buildersmate]

Adding to Maggimae's comment, I believe that it is a standard practice by solicitors to send out a questionnaire as part of preliminary enquiries which is used to clarify what is and what is not included as part of the sale. Three of the questions will say something like - is there a heating system, what is the fuel, has it been maintained? In the first instance you could go back to your solicitor to find out how the seller answered these questions. That may help you.

[tmrt84]

Thanks for all of your replies they are realy helpful. I am in the process of checking things with our solicitors to see what was said on the matter, bu with regards to the survey it does statae that there is a gas central heating system installed but as the property was vacant and had no gas supply (there was no gas meter installed) the surveyor will not have been able to test the system.

[themas]

What you say about the surveyor is fair enough up to a point, but if your partner was able to see (presumably quite rapidly) that the system was not installed properly then it is perhaps reasonable to argue that the surveyor should have picked this up on an inspection, whether he could actually test the system or not.

As has been said, your first line of approach is your solicitor but you should also consider a complaint to the firm the surveyor works for.

[daz200]

It sounds from your answer that the surveyor knew his stuff but you didn't read his report until it was too late.