Help: getting a mortgage on a commercial property that will be changed to residential

Jones8087

Hi all

This is my first post so apologies if its in the wrong place or confusing/excessive!

Basically, we have sold our existing property and found a house we love, which unfortunately has been used as offices therefore is commercial. We have been told we need full planning permission for change of use to residential and been advised by senior planning that it should go through with no issues, however nram won't port our existing mortgage as they do not want the risk associated.
Therefore we want to look at new mortgage options.. As it would be nice to get on a deal anyway..But we are struggling to find anyone who will consider us until the property is classed as residential.

We know very little, so any advice would be greatly appreciated. The property is fit for use as residential with no changes to layout/no building work required. Only fitting of a new bathroom.

Our dilemma is do we take the risk - apply for planning, redeem or mortgage with nram, instruct solictiors, rent a house and hope once the planning has gone through we will be able to find a provider who will deem it worth what we have offered (£106k) or is it all too complicated and should we walk away?

Sorry this has been a long one but thanks in advance

GMS

How much deposit do you have? How much will the works cost to put to residential and do you have this separately?

Jones8087

Thanks for the reply. We only have 10% deposit. We would use our own money to carry out any work but we could move right in and only need to fit a shower for it to be habitable.

GMS

Cant see any way of doing this at 90%.

If it is so easy to get permission for residential then why hasn't the vendor done it? Selling with permission for residential could get them a better price.

Are you sure it is as easy as you think? Building control can turn a simple conversion into a money pit. I have a client currently at 80k for converting a commercial to residential and thats only to get the structure up to current regs.

Thrugelmir

Jones8087 wrote: »

We would use our own money to carry out any work but we could move right in and only need to fit a shower for it to be habitable.

May not not be a highly residential property. Which would be the issue for the lender.

I would recommend you build more equity before undertaking such a project.