Builder Trickery

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pmc123

Registered User
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Hi,
I signed contracts for a house last May but have still not received them back from the builders. Also no land registry approved scheme map.The advertised floor space was whatever the max limit is for a first time buyer to avoid atamp duty. I've been fobbed off about there being errors with the measurements some of the units and also about the builders being delayed because of them having to resolve some tax issue on the sales.

I'd gotten sick of looking for them and was just adapting to the wait when I called to the site today.

The house is built, painted, wired...ready to rock. BUT the builders are in the proceess of errecting a stud partition against one of the exterior walls in two bedrooms to reduce the overall floor space of the dwelling by about 70 sq. ft.

I presume this is to do with the square footage limitation for tax purposes.
I've been told I can remove the stud partitions when the sale is completed but I'm concerned by this development.

Does anyone know:
Is this a regular occurance?
Is it for my benefit or the builders - from a tax / stamp duty perspective?
If I close on the revised floor area measurements, will I not then get the deeds for a property that is likely to be altered, thus leading to problems down the line?

Apologies for the length of this post but I'm new to all this.
 
basically someone in government issues a floor area certificate which affects FTB status and Stamp Duty (the former less so since the grant was abolished) and goes on the deeds (I think)

you have guessed correct though
 
I always thought that the floor area was taken by measuring the dimensions of the outside walls. As such adding a stud partition to ab internal way would make no difference. I must be mistaken??
 
floor area includes inside walls so the builder would be studding the outside ones only, get him to insulate and dryline the outside , it makes a big difference to heating and he has to do it anyway (bar the fibreglass which will cost about €200 ) :p
 
Unless the house is costing more than €576,000, (or unless there is some very awkwardly high apportionment to the the site price for a house over grant size) it is exempt from Stamp Duty anyway (for owner occupier) so it seems most unlikely that there is a stud wall being put up to save stamp duty.

If this was the purpose of the stud, it would be fraud. Are you sure that they are losing 70 square feet? This would suggest a stud three or four feet out from the wall.
 
The house is (mid tce) e350,000 but I thought for a first time buyer on a new property a figure of 125 sq. metres floor space applied?

The solicitor says that if it exceeded that, there would be a duty charge on either a quarter of the price of the house or the price of the site.

It's definitely a stud wall that's going up - around 1 and a half metres from the walls.

Have been told it's unlikely the builders will agree to remove it but there's no problem if I subsequently reclaim the land! Any thoughts appreciated.
 
Unless the builder is attributing a value of more than €127k to site, this should be exempt form stamp duty even if over 125 sq. m.
 
The builders are charging over 127 for the site - just over - but still over the threshold. I presume this is for their own tax purposes.
 
pmc123 said:
It's definitely a stud wall that's going up - around 1 and a half metres from the walls.
Click to expand...

Well if you reclaim the space by 'restudding' front and back ...and you should, make sure you dryline and insulate. It makes a huge difference to heating in the house. This 1.5m gap with no fire retardant is a fire hazard under the building regulations but the builder will not want to redo them properly a second time . I'm sure its the cheapest plasterboard and bends easily too.

You should get all the allowances back off the builder in cash as the place will likely be a building site after he leaves for a while ..a good pair of carpenters will restud front and back walls in a day and a plasterer will fix it up and touch up in a day . As you are only skimming paster you can paint a week later.

You cannot do this after you move in, it will be a bloody mess , also make sure the external dimensions of the house have full planning permission as they now are and always will be.

Also get your full painting allowance back off the builder and the kitchen allowance and get your own gang in, thats what I would do anyway.
 
There are no allowances as the house is painted by the builders and all units are fitted with standard kitchens. I didn't buy the house from the plans - we made the purchase when the house was basically completed. Although we signed contracts in May they still haven't been returned. We have no land registry approved scheme map and no certificate of compliance. However, we stipulated that the contracts were subject to all this documentation being provided.

The extenal dimensions of the house are unchanged by the errection of the studded partition. It's a mid terrace house. I've been told that if we "reclaim" the area that's effectively being cordoned off, there will be no problems at a later date, if and when we decide to sell the property.

This problem is symptomatic of the wider difficulties for first time buyers. In effect, the building industry is effectively holding my ilk to ransom. I find their responses to any queries unsatisfactory in the extreme....The stock response resembles that of Brendan Grace when he was playing the jungle loving priest in Fr Ted: "Have you a problem with that?" ...i.e. if you do, we ain't bothered. The house will sell again if you pull out, we'll make even more money and you're going to be the loser in all of this.

It's hard to know what to do in the face of such attitudes.
 
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