converting garage

mi-key

#10 - which is what I gave, one point of view from someone who is looking to buy at the moment, and has looked at houses with converted garages.

To me, having a garage is more important than having an extra reception room - main reason being I have two expensive motorbikes that need to be garaged for insurance purposes - so while a seller may think their converted garage is adding value to the house, it depends who is looking to buy it.

Fair enough, for people who arent bothered about having a garage, then the extra room can be seen as a bonus, but it isnt going to add the same value as having a loft conversion would, which would be of benefit to most buyers.

It also depends on how well the conversion is done - of the two house we looked at, one had been done very well, and you wouldnt know it wasnt original to the house. The other basically looked like someone had stuck plasterboard on the garage walls and painted them, plus the 'reception room' could only be accessed by going through the kitchen, then through the utility room.

I'm not saying that the conversion may not help the house sell quicker, or that it wouldnt appeal to certain buyers, but it wont add the same value as a proper extension or loft conversion would.

As the post above points out, the conversion may add 8 to 10,000 to the price - having a proper professional conversion done, including the carpet, wiring, decorating etc... would eat up most if not all of this.

patmor

The reason we are thinking of converting the garage is that my husband is finding it increasingly difficult to get upstairs. We like the house and the area we live in and don't really want to move unless absolutely necessary. The garage conversion would make things so much easier for him. We would probably use the room as a study initially, but with a view to using it as a bedroom if necessary. We live in a small detached house with plenty of room at the side of the house. We have a good builder in mind for doing the job and are also thinking of having a proper tiled roof with storage in the roof space. We would build a new garden shed for storage too. We are not doing this to add value to the house, just for convenience, although obviously we would like to get some of the money back if we sold. The point of asking opinions if to see if it would actually put buyers off if we came to sell.

santana-mx3

mi-key wrote:

Also, assuming your house is on two storeys, you are adding an extra reception room, not making it a 4 bed house ( bit odd to advertise it as 4 beds 'but one of them is downstairs' ).

It's not true that you any room downstairs is really a reception room and not a bedroom.

Downstair bedrooms are likely to appeal to different buyers to upstair ones. Those with young families are likely to prefer all rooms to be on the same floor. However, someone who has an elderly parent or another family member who finds stairs difficult or impossible, will appreciate a downstair bedroom - especially if there is also a shower/ensuite. Similary, some people prefer the guest room to be on a different floor to the family's rooms for privacy. We have recently come across 3 families specifically looking for two storey houses with one bedroom downstairs.

There's nothing wrong with a downstair bedroom as long as buyers know in advance that one "bedroom" is downstairs and then they can decide whether they would want it to be a bedroom or an extra reception room. It's not unusual for a downstair room to have two alternative names in a selling description eg. "study/bedroom 4" or "playroom/bedroom 4" or "family room/bedroom 4".

As far as converted garages are concerned, we like to have garage space for storage (and if possible for one car as well) and to have driveway parking for 2-3 cars so converted garage properties don't usually appeal to us but there are quite a few of them in our area and they seem to sell quite quickly so they obviously do appeal to others.

YorkshireBoy

patmor wrote:

The reason we are thinking of converting the garage is that my husband is finding it increasingly difficult to get upstairs. We like the house and the area we live in and don't really want to move unless absolutely necessary. The garage conversion would make things so much easier for him. We would probably use the room as a study initially, but with a view to using it as a bedroom if necessary. We live in a small detached house with plenty of room at the side of the house. We have a good builder in mind for doing the job and are also thinking of having a proper tiled roof with storage in the roof space. We would build a new garden shed for storage too. We are not doing this to add value to the house, just for convenience, although obviously we would like to get some of the money back if we sold. The point of asking opinions if to see if it would actually put buyers off if we came to sell.

We were in a very similar situation 6 years ago with a 3-bed detatched house and 3 kids. The boys were '7 years apart' (with my daughter inbetween), and I converted the garage into a bedroom for the eldest boy to help him in his studying for his final year at secondary school.

I thought long and hard about the impact on the selling price, but decided that what mattered was what we wanted - not someone else! However, I did put a lot of effort into planning the job so that it could very easily be converted back if needed (over a couple of weekends). To be honest though, I'd put it on the market 'as-is', and convert if we were asked to by prospective buyers. Alternatively, I may reduce the asking price and let them do their own convert (I have digital pictures and a video of the conversion process).

Re the discussion on what you can 'call it', 3 estate agents we asked to value it, and 2 surveyors (valuing for re-mortgage purposes) all refused point blank to class it as a bedroom. The estate agents said we could call it a study/4th bedroom, but the valuers wouldn't budge and said it had to go down as another 'reception room' since it was on the ground floor.

To the OP,

If you search the chat forum for 'garage conversion' you'll see that this topic has come up many times in the past. My own (full) story is on one of the threads.

Whilst you may not need full 'building regs', you will certainly need to obtain 'building notice' because you'll need to comply with fire escapes and fire safety, and ventilation requirements.

You must let your mortgage providers know what you're doing.

You must also notify your buildings & contents insurance providers.

mi-key

OP - if the reason you are doing it is for your husband to make life easier, rather than trying to increase the house value, then just go and do it and dont worry about if the house is worth more or less.

From the sound of it you are planning on staying in the house because you like the area, so arent looking to sell anyway, so any added value is irrelevent.

swizzle_2

We have just converted our attached garage into a bedroom- we already had a downstairs loo.

I rang the council and we had to have planning consent and building regs. Plus get certs from the spark. We are using it as a familyroom at mo, but plan to use it as a bedroom when the children are older.So on the plans it says bedroom-it`s put my house ins up!

Why not get an estate agent round and ask them? Thats what we did. we have plenty of off road parking-our drive takes 7 cars!

Estate agent gave us a price for our house- then asked about conversion- they said aslong as it was done well, we should get at least the cost of the conversion back. Not had it revalued.

But if you like where you are-the cost of the conversion should be less than the costs to move-ie estate agents fees,solicitors and stamp duty. So I would say it- you`ve nothing to lose and alot to gain.

Good luck

clutton_2

"I rang the council and we had to have planning consent and building regs"

is plannign "consent" the same as planning permission - as this is the first i have heard of having to have planning permission to change the function of an internal space - building regs, for sure, it has to be built to a safe standard.

swizzle_2

No planning consent is differant to planning permission.

We were told we could have planning consent- which involved telling them what we planned to do, they then loggedthis and came out at beginning and end-we got a certificate of completion at end-which we will need to sell as a room. This cost approx £200

We were told that we could also apply for planning permission but we would have to submit full plans- which we would have to get drawn up- cost £300+ plus pay for planning permission and have to wait for it to be agreed

So the cheaper and quick option was planning consent.

UNICORN_2

Personally I'd much rather have a garage than an extra room. When I moved last year I scored off all houses with a converted garage.

Could you not have a stairlift installed instead ? That could be resold when you next move

Jorgan_2

As well as checking on planning/building regs its worth checking that the original builders permission isn't required, many have covenants in place. Permission, in my experience, is never refused, as long as you pay for their admin time to produce a letter confirming they give their consent, usually about £120.