Should I purchase next door?

Hopeful2

My neighbour is selling a 3 bed house and mine is a 2. I need extra space as I work at home and live with my 25 year old son. I have £35000 left on my mortgage, next door is £170. Would it be better for me to take out new mortgage and let my son continue paying mine as I would like to be in a position to give him the house at some stage. Or should I do a buy to let on mine? Any help appreciated. Also how much roughly would it cost without an estate agent to do the sale etc?

david29dpo

if you are happy with the price and its what you want, buy it. if you can get more per month in rent on your old house than what you pay mortgage, rent it out. living next door to a rented out house is bliss! and it will help you pay the mortgage on your new house. if the house is not with an agent at the moment this is even better, this will not affect you as the seller pays the fees anyway but you can do a deal between your-self's . costs to you will be legal fees, mortgage fees, stamp duty.

Vital_Spark_2

You should also be aware of the new registration ruling for people renting out property.

It is essential that you register (fee of £55, anually) with your local Council when renting out property. The landlord must lodge their application for registration by 30th April, if already renting out.

As far as I know, if you are using an agent who is already registered, you are okay but you would be required to register them, if not.

Be careful with agents they can cost you more than it's worth to leave the management to others.

I believe the fines for not registering in time are quite hefty.

Perhaps this applies to Scotland alone but I think there would ahve been a huge uproar as per the experimental introduction of the old Poll Tax in Scotland 1st, if that was the case.

BobProperty

Vital_Spark wrote:

You should also be aware of the new registration ruling for people renting out property.

It is essential that you register (fee of £55, anually) with your local Council when renting out property. The landlord must lodge their application for registration by 30th April, if already renting out.

As far as I know, if you are using an agent who is already registered, you are okay but you would be required to register them, if not.

Be careful with agents they can cost you more than it's worth to leave the management to others.

I believe the fines for not registering in time are quite hefty.

Perhaps this applies to Scotland alone but I think there would ahve been a huge uproar as per the experimental introduction of the old Poll Tax in Scotland 1st, if that was the case.

Perhaps this applies only to HMO's. I think it unlikely that a 2 or 3 bed house would count as a HMO.

Ian_W

Hopeful2 wrote: My neighbour is selling a 3 bed house and mine is a 2. I need extra space as I work at home and live with my 25 year old son.

Just a couple of points you might want to think about:
1. If your son continues to live in your present house, will you still need the extra space?
2. I don't think most BTL mortgages will allow close relatives as tenants.
3. The idea of your son continuing to pay your present mortgage only works if your earnings are sufficent to allow the combined level of lending for both mortgages.

There may well be ways to buy both houses but as the point of buying next door is for extra space for you AND your son I'm afraid I've lost the plot as to why you need both? Put yours on the market and sell to buy next door or if you want both remortgage as a BTL on yours and rent it out commercially with a residential mortgage on your new property. If you do the latter you'll need to make sure the figures add up for your area, i.e. can you get enough rent to cover the mortgage AND other costs.
HTH.

matto

For information on registering HMOs see this article for starters http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/main.jhtml?xml=/property/2006/04/05/plandlord05.xml&sSheet=/property/2006/04/06/ixpmain.html

Hopeful2

It seems as if the best thing to do would be to sell mine and buy next door. Only problem is mine needs to much work to do on it in such a short time. Any idea on how much I would need to sell mine and purchase theirs with all the extras. I may find it is all to costly but don't want to waste time getting it all sorted if it would not be cost-effective. Thanks very much for all the responses.