been given a cafe. How do i fund it becoming a house?

vonandpaul

Hello,

My mum has a cafe which has been shut down and she has spoke to planning department who have said there shouldn't be any issues around getting it changed to residential.

Problem is, I dont really want to stay in this property. My children are settled in a fantastic school.

we guess it will take between 20-50k(depending how much we want to do , eg choice of leaving without garage, or build garage, standard kitchen or state of the art) and the property will be sold for somewhere between 200-300k depending how much we do to it.

essentially after we finish we would have a house which once sold leaves us with a minimum of 150k profit. to which we can use to get a mortgage where we live just now and kids are at school.

At present neither myself or partner has ever had a mortgage. Always rented. We are also due to be getting married soon. Is there any tax reasons to do this before rather than after we do the build?

how would we stand in respect of tax if we didn't live in the property? or if we did?

I was told something along the lines of we must live there for a year? could we rent out for that year and avoid tax? I suppose it really depends what is more costly? the tax on a profit? or paying mortgage on the borrowings to finish the conversion??

HELP!

also... will i need to have the property already in my name to secure a mortgage.