House valuation, no permission for parking - please help!

miffyhugmuffin

Hi,

We are buying a house and the surveyor has been round to have a look. There is currently no parking space on the property but the vendor has put in a planning application to knock down a portion of the front garden wall so that a car can be parked alongside the house. The case officer has indicated that planning permission to knock down the wall is likely to be granted on 26th August.

However, the case officer has also said that the Highways Authority may object to the new opening being used by vehicles. The surveyor (who spoke to the case officer) thinks this is very likely.

Does anyone have experience of this sort of thing? Did the vendor do the planning application incorrectly, should they have spoken to the Highways people first? At the moment all we would have is permission to knock a hole in the wall, not to park our car there.

This will obviously mean we will want to pay less for the house.

I have no idea how these things work, how can we get the highways people to agree. Under what grounds can they object, is it just safety?

Also does anyone know how much we should lower our offer by if creating a useable parking space isn't possible? It's a 3-bed house, £250k.

Thanks for any opinions / advice

Catbells

I;m looking for a house too at present. Parking is not obligatory and is reflected - often - in the price. I don't think you can chip away at the price on account of no parking as its already been taken into account. Have a look at neighbouring houses prices to see if they compare. Go to https://www.housepricespy.com for this.

If a hole in the wall doesn't mean you can park your car there then be careful as it would be no use to you at all.

You could look at the local council's guidelines for parking and for lowering the pavement which I believe is fairly costly. Good luck.

poppysarah

Does it have a dropped kerb?

If they don't have one of those they are breaking the law driving over the pavement.

miffyhugmuffin

The surveyor's report says it isn't worth £250k if there is no potential to create a parking space, which is why we would consider lowering our offer. We will have to lower our offer anyway as the roof needs quite a lot of money spending on it (it's an 1850s house) so we want to take parking into consideration at the same time.

The house is in a conservation area, it's situated in a seaside village in a tiny lane which is very narrrow so there are no footpaths or curbs. It's basically road then the our wall. Hardly any cars go down the road, only the people who live there to access their houses, and the road is one way.

It's a really cute house and I want to live there, but at the right price!

westv

poppysarah wrote: »

Does it have a dropped kerb?

If they don't have one of those they are breaking the law driving over the pavement.

It won't have a dropped kerb yet. It's only a potential parking area.

westv

miffyhugmuffin wrote: »

The house is in a conservation area, it's situated in a seaside village in a tiny lane which is very narrrow so there are no footpaths or curbs. It's basically road then the our wall. Hardly any cars go down the road, only the people who live there to access their houses, and the road is one way.

Presumably there's sufficent space for safe entry or exit to any planned off road parking.

miffyhugmuffin

It's a quiet road, so it's not fast, busy or dangerous, but it is quite narrow. Other houses in the street have parking, in fact the house opposite does. We are on a bend in the road though.