Changing lender - valuation required - garage converted

keiron

Hi all,

I am looking to change my lender and release some equity from my house. As part of doing so the lender will come and do a valuation.

I've lived at the house for 5 years and in that time I've converted the garage into a guest bedroom and also added insulation to the conservatory roof. We have lots of guests at the house - my girlfriend is foreign and so her family and friends come to visit a lot.

I'm interested to find out if the valuer or mortgage lender will have any issue with the garage conversion (we did not get planning although the conversion has been done to the council approved conversion-to-bedroom spec). Also interested if they would have an issue with there being a bedroom in the conservatory.

Cheers

Davesnave

If the garage is integral, then you probably didn't need planning permission anyway. Now it's done, it will be hard to prove that the work was done to building control standards, and people will be rightly suspicious that it wasn't.

With the conservatory, it was only classed as an outbuilding in the first place, so sticking a fake roof on it will not change anything. The walls, floor and foundations probably wouldn't meet building regs. If you want to use it as a bedroom, that's your business, not a valuer's.

All the valuer will do is assess the worth of the property. You have made some changes, but none of us can say if the valuer will think these add anything to what the place is worth. They probably don't detract from what it would be worth without them is as much as I'd say.

davidmcn

The valuer will point out anything which looks like an alteration

The solicitor will be looking for any necessary statutory consents for everything you've done. If you haven't bothered getting them, then they will (probably) be able to get indemnity insurance, failing which (if the works are very recent, for example) you may need to get retrospective consent.

The lender won't care as long as the boxes are somehow ticked.

Nobody cares if you stick a bed in the conservatory. But it doesn't add an extra bedroom to the value.

theartfullodger

A lot of guests? Paying rent? Declared to HMRC?

keiron

Forgive my ignorance but is there a solicitor involved when changing lender?

keiron

Thanks for the advice everyone. Gonna just have to get the valuation and see what happens ��

silvercar

keiron wrote: »

Forgive my ignorance but is there a solicitor involved when changing lender?

Yes. The new lender's charge on the property needs to replace the old lender's charge.

Often an in-house legal service will be offered by the lender. This means that the lender can control everything from one point and the borrower doesn't need to wait for the lender/ valuer/ solicitor to all communicate.

Often the process is a speedier one as the lender knows that a previous solicitor performed all the necessary checks on the borrower and on the property. So the process may be as short as the Land Registry registration of the new charge, removing the old charge and an indemnity covering that the previous solicitor did all the normal house buying checks.

eddddy

FWIW, often, a lender will use a national firm of valuers. The valuer will travel a long way and not be familiar with the area.

And when I last did this a few years back, my lender paid the valuation firm a fee of just £75 - so the valuer's research is fairly limited.

If you had just bought the property on the open market, that would give the valuer a big clue about what the property is worth - but in this case you haven't. Consequently, some people are very disappointed with re-mortgage valuations.


As a suggestion... the first question the valuer asked me was "Has the property been valued by an EA recently?". I said "yes", and gave him copies of 3 recent written EA valuations.

I'm pretty sure that he just took the EA valuations and knocked off 10%, as a safety margin.

EachPenny

Davesnave wrote: »

If the garage is integral, then you probably didn't need planning permission anyway. Now it's done, it will be hard to prove that the work was done to building control standards, and people will be rightly suspicious that it wasn't.

You need to be aware though that there are some circumstances where you would need planning consent or other approvals to convert a garage into living space. That, plus the potential building regulations issues may cause you difficulties when you come to sell the property.

So even though it may not be an issue for the re-mortgage, be aware that you may need to regularise everything in future before you start to market the property for sale.

PField

You don't need to get anything unless you are trying to market the garage as a bedroom. If you don't have consents then it is still just a storage area/ garage and will be valued as such. Much like a loft conpnversion without consent is a just a loft room room or an attic with a staircase rather than a pull down ladder.

EachPenny

PField wrote: »

You don't need to get anything unless you are trying to market the garage as a bedroom. If you don't have consents then it is still just a storage area/ garage and will be valued as such. Much like a loft conpnversion without consent is a just a loft room room or an attic with a staircase rather than a pull down ladder.

That isn't strictly true. If your conversion has made the garage unusable as a garage (which you have to assume it would to comply with the standards for a bedroom) then you might be in breach of planning restrictions and/or covenants.

It may be unlikely that any enforcement action will be taken against you, but it can cause problems when you come to sell.