Commercial property turn into residential with no planning permission needed.

MrEnglish

So how much will house prices further fall when the market is flooded with these commercial buildings turned into houses and flats?

Cleaver

MrEnglish wrote: »

So how much will house prices further fall when the market is flooded with these commercial buildings turned into houses and flats?

Not much, because I don't think the market will be 'flooded'. Most people want to live in a house, or a flat, which is normally an established or purpose build residential building.

As a lot of people have pointed out, there will be old, commericial biuildings that would make great residential properties, but someone needs to identify ones that are suitable and then do a conversion that suits.

I live in a typical suburb of a city where there are thousands of semi-detached, detached and terrace houses, along with some new and old blacks of flats. Of the top of my head I can't think of that many commericial propeties around here that would make great conversions. A few closed down pubs I guess, but not a lot more.

Think about the area you live in Mr English. Are there 'floods' of unused, commerical propeties that are economically viable for someone to turn in to desirable residential accommodation? If there are 'floods' of these near you, then I guess your market will be 'flooded'. Can't really see it in most places though.

Having said this, I guess any additional of residential property to any market has a downward effect on prices to some extent. Not sure it will be noticable after this new development though.

MrEnglish

Someone said quarter of a million additional properties will be flooding the market this year.

I would say this will have a big impact.

Cleaver

MrEnglish wrote: »

Someone said quarter of a million additional properties will be flooding the market this year.I would say this will have a big impact.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5b005d46-5191-11e0-888e-00144feab49a.html#axzz1H9kL5OL3

If all the long-term office space now unoccupied was converted it could potentially deliver 250,000 new homes, a Whitehall source said. “Many towns and cities have office blocks, warehouses and business parks needlessly lying empty, while housebuilding has fallen to the lowest in peacetime history, because the planning system has tied developers up in knots of red tape.”

Liz Peace, chief executive of the British Property Federation, said: “While clearly we would not want to see property that might still be capable of sustaining jobs taken out of commercial use, there are many places where business will never come back and it makes huge sense to look at alternative uses.”

So 250,000 homes won't be 'flooded' on to the market, and certainly not this year. It looks as though if you take all the empty, unused office space and converted it in to houses you would have quarter of a million new pads. But for one of these to be converted you'd have to meet the following criteria:

• It would have to be economically viable to turn it in to residential. I.e. the cost of buying the building, plus the rennovation, plus room for profit, was worthwhile;
• The building would have to be a desirable, residential dwelling that people want to live in;
• The building would have to practically lend itself to be a residential building. There's a disused car showroom about half a mile from us, just off a roundabout, that could just never be residential.
• Every empty commercial block has an owner who wants to sell / convert. There will be many people who wish to retain these as office blocks etc. for one reason or another.

So I'm not doing a Hamish and just dismissing this. I think it's a great idea and, as I said before, any additional houses in the system will bring prices down somewhat. But you're saying that 1/4 million homes will 'flood' the market this year. That just clearly isn't the case if you read the actual information surrounding this. It's more likely that a small minority of these 250,000 unused properties will fit the bill for a conversion and this will go ahead.

I have to say that in today's market you'd be a brave individual or company to buy a disused commercial building, plow your money in to it and turn it to flats. I'm sure developers in 2005/6 etc. would have bitten your hand off for that opportunity, but in 2011/12? Blimey, you'd better get your sums and market right.

vivatifosi

If people are interested in the types, age and size of commercial floorspace in this country it is worth having a look at the commercial and industrial floorspace data on the communities.gov website. For example, this section shows how old commercial space is:

http://www.communities.gov.uk/archived/publications/planningandbuilding/ageindustrialstock

And this section shows how much space there is by type and how it is distributed around the country:

http://www.communities.gov.uk/planningandbuilding/planningbuilding/planningstatistics/livetables/tablescommercialindustrialfloors/

dopester

My first thought when learning about this was NDG. Lots of large houses around her way which are offices and lots of hoops to jump through to get them into residential status. When I last checked her area on RM I was noticing a tickup of commercial units coming up for sale... perhaps (guessing) having commercial tenants struggling or going elsewhere for lower rents.

Also perhaps worth a re-read, a Daily Mail story I had included in my media pimped thread.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/property/article-1230192/As-number-shops-Britain-soars-local-councils-turning-bids-turn-homes.html

PasturesNew

If you ignore shops, there are very very few offices/etc in my area. It's not a place for businesses to thrive, so there aren't any.

chewmylegoff

PasturesNew wrote: »

Homes are for living in, not speculating on.

yeah but building homes / property development is a business. if there was no return, noone would take the risk and no* commercial property would get converted into homes.


* = except for mr english's new DIY warehouse conversion.

tyler80

Nevermind the empty commercial properties, what about tackling the empty residential properties first?

lynzpower

Well the other problem is that some commercial property is ( or has been ) massively more expensive than a standard family homehere in London. Commericail property here in london has for some years been reported as wildly overvalued, certainly there is a massive oversupply.
I would prefer this option ( if it works) than building flats on some kids school playground!

I think a disused car garage COULD be converted into a home, but a) that car garage is likely to cost more than a real house, that it will need a huge amount doing to it to make it "liveable". I wonder the role of building control here?

Out of interest, if one wanted to buy a commercial building that for example has no kitchen or proper bathroom ( ie only has a loo) would insurers still lend on this? As many will not lend pn properties that are not "habitable" ??

one wonders whether the insurance industry is aware and equipped to deal with this, I lived in residential above a commercial factory and insurers did not like this one bit, and I struggled hard to get contents ( one out of 20 firms I tried insured me)

Are lenders up for this then? If they dont like slab build blocks of flats Id imagine there will be a lot of permutations of commercial property that surveyors wont be too keen on?

questions questions!