Sellers responsibility

[alan30]

If you know there is a fault with something you are selling are you legally obliged to declare it? My daughter recently bought a house and on moving in discovered that it needs a new boiler. British Gas say they visited the house earler this year and advise a new boiler was required. The seller stated that as he was selling the house he would leave it. The surveyor says that the the fault would not be covered by the survey. Is there any recourse against the seller or is this the usual buyer beware situation? I should add the seller confirmed the system was reguallrly maintained as part of a service agreement and the assumption was that it was therefore serviceable.

[Ethel]

Your daughter should contact the solicitor who acted on her behalf for the conveyance.

Obviously the seller is pulling a fast one here - the state of the boiler will not show in the usual survey and the seller has blatantly lied - the boiler had not been maintained up until the date of the sale.

I strongly advise your daughter not to let this go.

If all else fails, it is not expensive to pursue this in the small claims court.

Good luck!

[don1]

Surveyors are the biggest waste of money on earth (bunch of *******) they do nothing, they know nothing and they get paid large amounts of money for doing **** all

Anyone paying these ******* is being conned big time

[dzug]

I am a little wary of British Gas saying 'you need a new boiler'.

It may be true, but it could also be a way of them saying we don't have the parts any more and can't be bothered to look for them or just we'd like to sell you a new one.

I'd get a second opinion, from a specialist for the make if possible.

[wendilla]

I was in the same situation 2 years ago.My solicitor contacted British Gas and was told the same that a new boiler was advisable by the previous occupants .My solicitor wrote to the previous occupants .did not need to take them to court within 14 days a new boiler was installed.Hope you will be as lucky as this.This new law coming out should cover this .

[gina32]

i suppose the seller may not have been lying in so much as he said the boiler was regularly maintained, it may well have been up to the time they told him a new one was needed, speak to your solicitor

[Kat213]

Any decent solicitor would have advised you to have a separate survey done on the central heating system - it is relatively cheap and avoids this sort of situation.

Unless the seller has blatantly lied on the property information form you may have no recourse against them. The boiler may well have been regularly maintained and it was presumably during such routine maintenance that British Gas advised that they 'need a new boiler'. Was it not working at all? If not then you are probably in a stronger position, but if it was in working order, despite having been advised that it should be replaced, there may be little you can do.

I have a maintenance contract with British Gas, and as part of the contract they come out once a year to check the boiler. on the first such annual inspection, the engineer told me I should consider replacing my combi-boiler, which was four years old at the time ....... I have had no problems whatsoever with it since that time five years ago! I think they are briefed to try to sell new boilers!

[alan30]

Many thanks to all. In touch with solicitors tomorrow!

[cascarelli]

Unless the seller actually lied to you about this you probably wont get very far I'm afraid.

At the moment the seller doesn't have to declare any faults with the property unless you ask them directly. If they said that the boiler has been maintained regularly then this might well be true. Was the boiler working when you viewed the property?

Unfortunately, normal surveys wont cover this either and certainly not the Homebuyer surveys.