When purchasing a property, the burden of knowing what is being bought is placed firmly on the buyer. Buyers are tasked with obtaining surveyor’s reports, searches of the local area and any risks to the property (such as chancel repairs or flooding) and asking the seller appropriate questions about the property itself to decide whether they are willing to proceed to exchange contracts and buy. This legal maxim is known as “buyer beware!”.
PIF – Property information form
Seasoned property purchasers will be familiar with the essential “PIF” (property information form), which is completed by sellers when selling their properties. The PIF is used so that a seller can provide key information in a prescribed form which will inform a potential buyer’s decision on whether or not they will continue with their intention to purchase a property. Key questions in the PIF include whether the seller knows of the presence of any Japanese knotweed, whether there have been any ongoing neighbour disputes or whether there have been any infestations at the property.
It is important for would-be sellers to appreciate that the PIF, in the field of property litigation, is also frequently the subject matter of misrepresentation claims against former sellers, where a buyer argues that they have relied on a false representation made to them by their former seller, which induced them into entering into the sales contract and which has thereby caused them a financial loss.
Ordinarily, where a misrepresentation is found to have been made in the act of selling a property, a buyer will be awarded a level of damages to reflect any diminution in value between the price they paid for the property, and what the market value of that property would have been had the undisclosed item omitted from the PIF been made available to the buyer at the point of exchange of contracts.
It is interesting to now see a widely reported and incredibly high value misrepresentation claim being heard in the courts which resulted in a vastly different outcome than the usual “damages for diminution in value” remedy to which we property litigators have become accustomed.
Patarkatsishvili & Anor v Woodward-Fisher [2025] EWHC 265 (Ch)
“The Moths case”
In the 2025 case of Patarkatsishvili & Anor v Woodward-Fisher, Mr William Woodward-Fisher sold his luxury villa in a high-end residential neighbourhood in Notting Hill to Ms Patarkatsishvili for the sum of £32,500.000.00.
It was presented during the trial that during his ownership of the property, Mr Woodward had redeveloped the property to include sheep wool insulation in the cavity walls. One might consider this to be a natural choice, to use natural fabrics in such a high specification development such as this. However, unbeknownst to Mr Woodward, natural-wool fibres are also highly attractive to household moths.
During his ownership, Mr Woodward discovered (and knew) that his newly developed property had also become home to an eclipse of moths who had bedded themselves into the woollen linings of the property’s new cavity insulation. In full knowledge of this infestation, Mr Woodward proceeded to market his property and found a buyer in Ms Patarkatsishvili. A purchase price of £32.5 million was agreed and contracts were exchanged after enquiries raised, including Mr Woodward’s responses in the PIF. Within his PIF, Mr Woodward failed to disclose that he had any knowledge of the infestation at the property, despite having full knowledge of this fact. Ms Patarkatsishvili subsequently issued a claim against Mr Woodward for misrepresenting that position.
Within her claim, Ms Patarkatsishvili successfully persuaded the court that she would not have purchased the property had she known the truth regarding the moth infestation. The Judge at the final trial found in favour of Ms Patarkatsishvili, finding that the buyer here had relied on the representations made by the seller when purchasing the property, and most importantly that those representations were knowingly false.
The unusual aspect of this case of course was that the Judge, Mr Justice Fancourt, found that the usual award of damages as outlined above was insufficient to compensate the buyer for her loss, and to place her back into her pre-contract position. Instead, Ms Patarkatsishvili was awarded rescission of the contract, essentially unravelling the sale to her and placing ownership back into the name of the seller, thereby ordering Mr Woodward to repay the purchase price of £32.5m back to Ms Patarkatsishvili together with damages towards SDLT costs and the like (less a sum towards the buyer’s use and occupation of the property to the date of the trial).
The important takeaway here of course is a strong reminder that while the onus is on the buyer to ask the right questions about the property they are purchasing, sellers must be careful to respond to those queries as accurately and truthfully as possible. Otherwise, in circumstances such as these, “buyer beware” can also find itself turned into “seller be careful”.
For more information on this or any other issue relating to housing disputes, contact Annabelle Randell or visit our Residential Property disputes page.