Residential or BTL?

_Milly__2

I'm thinking of buying a large Victorian property which was converted in to three flats in the 1970's. I intend living in one flat and renting out the other two.

The house is still registered as one property, so I'm unsure what type of mortgage I would need to apply for. Would I be able to apply for a residential mortgage or would I need a buy to let? Neither sounds correct to me. Is there an alternative?

The long term plan is to renovate all three flats and sell them separately. To do this I suspect that I will need to get retrospective planning permission and register them separately with the Land Registry. Has anyone got any experience of this?

Many thanks in anticipation.

Milly

Ditch_Crawler

You can 'apply' for anything you like! Whether your application will be accepted or not, who can say?....

About the planning permission etc, call the council - they will be extremely 'helpful'.

My guess is that you will have to spend a lot of money to sort this property out, and you will still run the risk of having some very dodgy 'neighbours'...

I have a tendency to use 'italics' far too much

Good Luck

DC

magpiecottage

Legally a mortgage is residential if you, or close relations occupy 40% or more of it.

Otherwise it is a buy to let. This gives you substantially less legal rights.

Ditch_Crawler

magpiecottage wrote: »

Legally a mortgage is residential if you, or close relations occupy 40% or more of it

I doubt whether that is a 'legal' definition - it's more like a commercial 'judgment'.

DC

getmore4less

magpiecottage wrote: »

Legally a mortgage is residential if you, or close relations occupy 40% or more of it.

Otherwise it is a buy to let. This gives you substantially less legal rights.

Reference to the relevent legislation please

planning_officer

When you say the building is registered as one property, do you mean for tax purposes, or in terms of its lawful planning use? Or both? I presume you mean that planning permission was never granted to convert the building into three flats? If that's the case, be very aware - planning permission may not be forthcoming if you apply to retain them, and if it was done without permission, then how do you know if Building Regs were adhered to either?

If I understand you incorrectly and planning permission was granted to convert the building into three flats, then you don't need any further permission to refurbish them and sell two off (unless you're doing any external works, which are likely to require planning permission, as flats have no permitted development rights).

Senior_Paper_Monitor

I'll ignore the planning issues (I'm sure the last poster has a clearer idea of the rules than me).

With regard the mortgage - this would almost certainly have to be a commercial mortagage (solely because most, if not all, the 'high street'/retail lenders - even those specialising in BTL - will not lend on this definition of property).

While commercial mortgages are not regulated (a fairly limited panel of providers at the moment) as a matter of course, where either the applicant (or immediate family) intend to live on the premises or where more than 40% of the floor area of the proeprty is for residential purposes it becomes a regulated mortgage for the purpose of the sales and documentation procedures (and if using a broker, they will have to be FSA regulated).