Question about our house - currently has a seperate basement flat

ShamzZ

Hi,

I live at home with my parents in a detached house. There is a basement, two floors and a loft conversion (via ladder). On the two upper floors there are 5 bedrooms and two bathrooms.

Many years ago, my father converted the basement into a self contained flat - with 3 bedrooms, kitchen/dining room and a bathroom - complelte with its own gas boiler and electricity meter. The basement "flat" has its own house number and its own payable council tax. For a few years my dad rented it out, but it hasn't been rented for 10+ years and there is a dicount on the council tax to reflect that.

My father recently passed away, leaving myself and my mum living at home. I was only young when the basement was converted so don't know the circumstances of it being seperated as a seperate property to the rest of the house.

We don't particularly want to rent out the basement flat, as it requires its own building insurance and boiler cover - and when you add in all the other landlord responisibilities, there isn't much profit to be made.

So..... can anyone suggest how we can go about converting the two back into one building? So that we don't have to pay 2x council tax. A friend says it would be a case of just taking out the downstairs bathroom so that it can't be considered as a seperate flat?

If we later wanted to get a single lodger (not tenant) would we be able to?

Thanks for reading, any help would be appreciated.

DVardysShadow

ShamzZ wrote: »

So..... can anyone suggest how we can go about converting the two back into one building? So that we don't have to pay 2x council tax. A friend says it would be a case of just taking out the downstairs bathroom so that it can't be considered as a seperate flat?

Taking out the bathroom seems a crazy and irrelevant thing to do. The number of bathrooms does not dictate the number of separate addresses - otherwise you would not be able to buy houses with 2 or more bathrooms at least not as a single address.

More likely, you either have to make sure that from one door you can access the whole property, or even just tell the council it is 1 address.

If we later wanted to get a single lodger (not tenant) would we be able to?

Yes. Everything which is not prohibited is permitted [for the moment, anyway]

G_M

Seperate front door implies separate property.
Seperate electricity meter implies separate property.
Seperate boiler (& gas meter?) implies separate property.
Seperate house number (individually listed by Royal Mail?) implies separate property.
The council will likely consider all these factors.

Against this could be argued any shared facilities.

ShamzZ

DVardysShadow wrote: »

More likely, you either have to make sure that from one door you can access the whole property, or even just tell the council it is 1 address.]

Yep, that is something we could do quite easily

G_M wrote: »

Seperate front door implies separate property.
Seperate electricity meter implies separate property.
Seperate boiler (& gas meter?) implies separate property.
Seperate house number (individually listed by Royal Mail?) implies separate property.

Yes all that is true (except it only shows on Royal Mail as one property).

We have been flip flopping a bit about whether to keep it as it is and rent out the basement. I suppose we need to decide first and then take the best action.

Thanks for the feedback

g_attrill

What area are you in? I would have thought a 3-bed flat (even a basement flat) would fetch far more than the insurance and boiler costs!

ShamzZ

g_attrill wrote: »

What area are you in? I would have thought a 3-bed flat (even a basement flat) would fetch far more than the insurance and boiler costs!

Bradford (West Yorkshire) - I said that because though we live near a University, there are lots of available private accommodation in the area. When I checked recently - 3 blocks of private flats aimed at students and an abundance of available houses for rent. All of which, ranging from 35ppw to 80ppw. Seeing as the academic year has started, there seems to be a lot of rental property going unrented.