Mortgage for renovations

T1106

Hi all, after as much advise as possible please. A few years ago me & husband were left a house, it was in a bad state of repair, damp, no heating only coal fire, old electrics etc. We sold our house and paid off our mortgage and used the money we made to put an extension on, new windows, doors & sort out the damp problem. Being naive we also ripped out the kitchen & bathroom! Now we are wanting to get a small mortgage to complete all the work, new electrics, heating, kitchen, bathrooms but obviously as it has no kitchen/bathroom it's classed as inhabitable! What is the best way around this? Would a sink with cold running water, a flushable toilet & one electric socket be classed as habitable? It doesn't help that we are self employed, so getting a mortgage is hard enough. Any advice greatly appreciated!

Bimbly

I had a similar issue in that I started renovations before applying for the additional loan on my mortgage and then discovered that a man was going to come round and value the house which, at the time, had an extension with boarded up holes where the window were supposed to be.

The surveyor company let me talk to the surveyor man before he came and he agreed that with the boarded up windows it wouldn't be considered habitable, so I should re book the survey when a bit more work had been done to it.

When he came back, the only thing left in the old kitchen was literally the kitchen sink. The builders had brought in a kettle for tea, but that was it. The bathrooms were still being done, but there was a working loo downstairs for the builders. That was it.

The surveyor said the mortgage company knew I was carrying out the work and so the fact that it was in progress was ok. He didn't seem bothered that the downstairs heating wasn't installed yet.

But, to answer your question more directly, you will need a working kitchen and bathroom for a mortgage company to lend on the property, even for an additional loan to an existing mortgage. It has to be "habitable".

But it doesn't have to be the Ritz. A kitchen sink with a kettle and microwave will be ok, plus a working toilet. If you look online at people who have been in this situation (try the Mumsnet property forum -- really!) they've often just got something cheap (or second hand) installed then ripped out again.

I might have been lucky in that my surveyor was really nice. I was going for a 50% loan to value (so I had a good chunk of equity) and he didn't have worries about the work being started. But it was good to ask him about it before he came.

You might want to be straight with the mortgage company and get from them how "habitable" they want it to be. You might be able to talk to the surveyor ahead of time and ask. But the rule of thumb is a working kitchen and bathroom. By this they generally mean as long as someone can have a wash, go to the toilet and make a basic meal, then you should be ok.

T1106

Many thanks