Loft conversion planning permission

Cakeguts

Waterlily24 wrote: »

Our place has rooms in the roof - 3 bedrooms and a bathroom bedroom sizes are 13' 6" x 10' 4", 15' 4" x 13' 6" and 20' 2" x 12' 11" wouldn't you call those bedrooms??

It isn't the size of the bedrooms in the loft that makes a difference it is the footprint of the house. A purpose built 4 bed house will be a bigger size than a 2 bed with a loft conversion. So the price of a 2 bed with a loft conversion is based on a 2 bed house not a 4 bed because the rest of the house is the size to match a two bed house.

Cakeguts

Doozergirl wrote: »

None of that makes any sense.

A house is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it. This house has building regulations sign off and is perfectly well built. It is absolutely a four bedroom house. You might as well be saying that any house with an extension is only worth the price of the original house.

It may not fetch as much as a four bed house over two floors but that is because a purpose built two storey house with the same bedroom floorspace will have 33% more floorspace downstairs than the three storey house. It is not worth less because it has a loft conversion and it is not priced as a two bed house.

This property also sounds very much like the conversion was carried out under permitted development, for which no planning paperwork would be required. It would be highly irregular for people to go to the effort of obtaining full building control sign off but not planning if it were needed. The layout also sounds very much like something that complies under PD.

OP, you can ask the vendor to obtain a certificate of lawful development, but it might delay things - it depends on how far down the line you are. It is not compulsory so the vendors are not doing anything wrong if it is under PD. It's just more money to spend.

Yes I agree but sometimes vendors base their sale prices of 2 bed houses with loft conversions on the price of 4 bed purpose built houses. So unless you are careful you can find yourself overpaying for a house with a loft conversion. This is why I was trying to point out that a 2 bed with a loft conversion is still a 2 bed house with a loft conversion not a 4 bed house because as you say a purpose built 4 bed is actually bigger. I agree that a house is worth what someone will pay for it but that someone has to be careful that they don't pay more than they need to.

Hoploz

The general size of all the accommodation will be taken into account when putting a valuation on the property.

The main difference is that you don't have a loft to stash all your junk in, which can be problematic, as I have found with mine!

If it's a bungalow with rooms in the loft then you often have a suitable amount of living accommodation to match the bedrooms. However if it's a standard 2 or 3 bed semi with tiny footprint then it might get top heavy and lack the required living space.

Either way it'll be up to who wants to buy it to determine the price, along with surveyor obvs.

House_mover81

Thanks all, having looked at it in more detail I'm pretty sure it will be considered permitted development and with the 4yr rule mentioned above, along with the fact many other houses on the street have done similar conversions, I don't think we have too much to worry about.

Re: the value, we've viewed a lot of houses in the area and are confident we're paying the right price.

Thanks for all your responses, it's helped put my mind at rest. They don't make buying a house straightforward do they?!:rotfl:

onlyroz

It depends on the additional volume added when considering the original size of the house. We needed planning permission for our loft conversion because, although the loft itself didn't exceed the allowed volume, when added to a side extension that the previous owner added, the volume was exceeded.

Waterlily24

When we put our plans in for an extension it wasn't allowed (we wanted to keep it as a bungalow) because the footprint was too big. We were allowed to put three large rooms plus a bathroom in the roof so the volume of the extension was quite big.


We originally had an L shaped bungalow - three bedrooms all accessed from the living room, L shaped kitchen, with the bathroom making the L shape square if that makes sense lol. We squared off the building making that a utility room, built a fairly large extension to the side for the living room and bathroom. Made two of the bedrooms into the master bedroom plus en suite (knocking down the wall between the two bedrooms. We also took part of the two bedrooms to make a hallway to the living room. The other bedroom was made into the study with a small bit taken off for another hallway.


The old kitchen, old bathroom and the old entrance hall are now the kitchen.


The ground floor is quite big because it's more or less square. Three rooms + hallway across and three rooms down. So I suppose that's why the rooms upstairs are fairly large.


We did have terrible trouble getting planning permission because they wouldn't allow us to go any higher even though the nearest properties are three houses and one bungalow. they aren't very close though. We come under country side and I think they are stricter because of that.

glasgowdan

Cakeguts wrote: »

Yes I agree but sometimes vendors base their sale prices of 2 bed houses with loft conversions on the price of 4 bed purpose built houses. So unless you are careful you can find yourself overpaying for a house with a loft conversion. This is why I was trying to point out that a 2 bed with a loft conversion is still a 2 bed house with a loft conversion not a 4 bed house because as you say a purpose built 4 bed is actually bigger. I agree that a house is worth what someone will pay for it but that someone has to be careful that they don't pay more than they need to.

Is this an example of what you're trying to convince us of? This 2 bed house? http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-62326451.html

Cakeguts

No something like this. You can see on street view what this started out as. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-56261716.html