(Potential) issues with sale of house beside a retail outlet...

rob oyle

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Went to see a house at the weekend that I may be interested in. Couple of things I noticed though and I was wondering if anyone had come across them before. The house was built by the owner of an adjoining retail unit and has a garage built as part of the house. This is being sold as part of the house but in reality, up until now, it was used as storage for the retail premises. The only access to the garage, other than the front gate, is a door through from the back of the retail unit. No real problem there, just close off the access.

However, the two gas meters for the house and the retail premises are in the shed and the gas pips for both go out through the walls of the garage into the house and separately, into the retail unit. Also, the electricity for the shed is connected through the retail unit – currently the house is occupied by tenants but the retail unit is unused and the electricity has been cut of there so the shed also has no power.

Has anyone ever come across this before…? I’m just wondering how big an issue this could be if/when the retail unit is sold. The gas would have to be repiped for the retail part but there’d be no incentive for the vendor or a new owner of the retail premises to do anything.
 
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As a clarification, the properties are being sold by the bank so I would imagine that they (or the estate agent acting on their behalf) aren’t interested in remedial work to have the gas meter and piping moved.
It's easy to have the pipes removed and gas cut off (and it'll be for the Gas network to do that work, paid for by some of the stakeholders) but has anyone ever had to deal with an issue relating to utilities between neighbouring properties?
 
Just in case anyone comes looking on this topic in future, here's an update:
Despite having submitted the highest offer on the property at several points, things never really got moving on this properly and I was at a loss to understand why.
I guess I hadn't considered the wider context of what was going on but I've now been told by the estate agent that an offer has been made for both properties and this was with the vendor for consideration. As much as I was considering how I'd deal with issues crossing both properties, this is also an issue for the seller so obviously the most straight forward way to deal with it from their perspective is to sell both properties in one lot and move on from what could be a messy situation if there were two separate buyers of the two properties.
 
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