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Converting flats into single house - Building Insurance query
AA1985
Posts: 3 Newbie
Hi All. This is a bit complicated but as an usual situation struggling to get clear advice. Hope someone can help!
We live in a semi detached house, currently split into 2 flats. We own building freehold and lease hold of both flats. We plan to knock the two flats into one (essentially restoring original layout of property). We have planning permission. We have hit a glitch with our current mortgage provider where we have a loan secured on one of the single leasehold flats. They have said they won't give us permission to do the work as they aren't willing to risk share the construction element (even though it's minimal as just taking down a non-original wall) but equally have said they can't stop us doing it and should we do the work we can contact them again at the point we want to collapse the leasehold into a freehold and they will port the mortgage from the leasehold flat to the freehold house (for an admin fee of course!). Having said that there is a risk that if we do the work without their permission we will be in breach of our mortgage terms and they could demand repayment of the mortgage when we approach them to collapse the lease. If this occurs this year we will owe an early repayment charge. We would like to avoid the ERC so an option is to do the work and live like a house, but not actually collapse the leaseholds and create an official single dwelling until after the erc period has lapsed in 2020. The question is what are the implications of that for building insurance etc? We would have insurance on two flats that would no longer be flats. Would a building insurer insure the property as a house if the title deeds held by land registry described it as two flats? Would flat insurance be invalid if the flats technically don't exist as they've been knocked together. What else can people think of that we need to consider? Thanks very much
We live in a semi detached house, currently split into 2 flats. We own building freehold and lease hold of both flats. We plan to knock the two flats into one (essentially restoring original layout of property). We have planning permission. We have hit a glitch with our current mortgage provider where we have a loan secured on one of the single leasehold flats. They have said they won't give us permission to do the work as they aren't willing to risk share the construction element (even though it's minimal as just taking down a non-original wall) but equally have said they can't stop us doing it and should we do the work we can contact them again at the point we want to collapse the leasehold into a freehold and they will port the mortgage from the leasehold flat to the freehold house (for an admin fee of course!). Having said that there is a risk that if we do the work without their permission we will be in breach of our mortgage terms and they could demand repayment of the mortgage when we approach them to collapse the lease. If this occurs this year we will owe an early repayment charge. We would like to avoid the ERC so an option is to do the work and live like a house, but not actually collapse the leaseholds and create an official single dwelling until after the erc period has lapsed in 2020. The question is what are the implications of that for building insurance etc? We would have insurance on two flats that would no longer be flats. Would a building insurer insure the property as a house if the title deeds held by land registry described it as two flats? Would flat insurance be invalid if the flats technically don't exist as they've been knocked together. What else can people think of that we need to consider? Thanks very much
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Comments
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You're going to need specialist renovation insurance during the build and then you would reinsure once you're done. You should always inform your home insurer if you're having building work done and I there's a good chance they will say that it's a bridge too far to cover a conversion.
I don't think they care what it's listed as on the land registry. They'd hust expect to see whateveryou've insured it as.Everything that is supposed to be in heaven is already here on earth.
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