Building a new house on garden

SkyWatcher_3

Hi all, I'm after some words of wisdom.

We live in a semi-detached property in a desirable village. We bought the house in 2006 and soon realised the potential for further development. Although the house was built by the Council in the 1930s it has a large garden plot - wide enough to accomodate another adjoining house, thereby potentially making our current house mid-terrace. The house ajoining ours still belongs to the Council.

I'm a bit fed up with living here and fancy realising the equity in this house and moving. I think we would be foolish not to sell our property with planning permission for the erection of another dwelling as this would obviously increase the price we could get for the site.

I am lucky enough to have found a friendly planning officer who kindly gave the site an informal assessment - his advice was that the property is within the boundary for development in the village and there should be no problems in getting planning permission.

My question is am I better to get outline permission or detailed permission? If detailed is better then how much am I likely to have to pay for plans for a three-bed house (ball-park figure).

keystone

If the PP is going to be that easy a better financial bet would be to borrow the necessary, build the second property then sell TWO houses.

Oh - sorry. I would have thought outline would be sufficient in your case.

Cheers

SkyWatcher_3

keystone wrote: »

If the PP is going to be that easy a better financial bet would be to borrow the necessary, build the second property then sell TWO houses.

Oh - sorry. I would have thought outline would be sufficient in your case.

Cheers

Thanks - I had thought about doing that although we both work full time and have a toddler at home so would rather take the cash and run, also hopefully avoiding any tax issues.

chrisw

I would also act quickly as the government are looking to put a stop to 'garden grabbing':-

http://www.communities.gov.uk/news/corporate/16083341

karie

sorry to resurrect an old thread, but...

skywalker: how did you get on?

and chrisw: any more info on the changes you mentioned?

My partner and I are in a similar position, with a particularly large garden at the back of the house, potential to create a long driveway down the side of the garden to a plot which we believe would be fine for a new property. Considering investigating the potential for planning permission...

karie

justjohn

God help you when you find out what an architect costs...its the only trade i have never managed to get a cheap price on..

hngrymummy

From a different prespective...

We looked at a lovely house. The owners told us about how their children had loved playing at the bottom of their garden in the orchard and had a tree house (we'd looked on Google earth and it showed a 100 yard garden).

Then they went on to tell us how they and their neighbours clubbed together and sold off their gardens to a developer who'd knocked a house down, put a road in and built a dozen new houses.

We went outside and looked at the now less than 50ft garden. It was horribly overlooked by almost all of the new houses. It felt crowded, public, and very, very uncomfortable. We could not even consider buying such an overlooked property.

More than 18 months later and the house is still up for sale. I hope they got a good price for the land, because they won't get a good price for the house, and their hopes of retiring to France have reached a sudden stop.

So, when considering developing your garden, have a long think about it. How will it affect the sale of your current house should you want to move? Maybe you'll get a few k for the land, but if you're stuck unable to sell your house, then it's no good to you at all.