Change of Use for Home?

KL1973uk

Hi,

I am not sure but hope that someone is kind enough to advise. I have a detached garage that is converted into a home office. If I was to rent this out, do I need to apply for a change of use on my property? The home office has no W.C at present but I am happy to add this if need be.

If in order to do this, my home does require a change of use, how does that affect my home as far as tax is concerned? OR if I do require a change of use, can it easily be converted back to a residential home status?

Appreciate any advice...thanks in advance!

eddddy

A home office that you use yourself would probably be considered as anciliary to your house - so (probably) no planning consent is required.

But if you rent it out as a self contained office, I suspect you would need all the following:

- Planning consent for change of use
- Consent from your mortgage lender
- Commercial buildings insurance for the garage/office.
- Pay business rates for the garage/office

And the garage ceases to be part of your main residence, so CGT liability might arise.

(And it would be unusual to get planning consent for an office in the middle of a most residential areas.)

KL1973uk

Thanks Eddy. Appreciate your response.

I would like to do this as have plenty of land but not worth risking if they are going to put CGT and all the other points you raised. That said, I read on another site - it wont let me paste the link here as a newbie that I would not require planning permission to change of use of an existing building on my land? So changing the home office to Annexe would not require planning???

eddddy

The key planning question is whether the building's use will be ancillary to the main house.

If it were a games room, sauna, home office, laundry room etc it would clearly be ancillary to the main house.

If it's a "granny annex" occupied by a dependent (or employee) of the occupant of the main house, I believe some court cases have decided that is "ancillary". (But you might still have a fight with the planners over this.)

If the "annex" is rented out - that would almost certainly be a separate dwelling (and therefore not ancillary) - and planning consent / mortgage lender / insurance issues would apply.