Possible move and extension

Matt5_2

Back in early 2018, I lost my grandmother, and subsequently inherited her property, and a relatively sizeable monetary inheritance with it.

To cut a long story short, the house is a semi in a very nice location, with quite a sizeable garden (much more so than our current house), and the idea of keeping the 'old family house' appeals to me and my partner. However, it's only a 2 bedroom (we need atleast a 3 bedroom), and with the greatest of respect to my late grandmother, it needs quite a bit of modernisation to appeal more to the tastes of ourselves. Plus it's an early 1920s building, with solid walls, and no fitted insulation, it's also got quite dated electrics through the house, with no fitted safety trip, and old style protruding wall sockets.

By comparison, our current house IS a 3 bedroom, more modern 1960s built semi with cavity wall insulation, in a nice enough area (although not as nice as my late grandmother's), however the footprint of the house is slightly smaller than the above, resulting in more rooms, but the rooms are smaller, meaning we're wanting for a little more living space. The idea of extending our current property has been on our minds, however there really isn't much room around the house to do this, without several key compromises in design, the short of it being, it isn't really suitable to invest in an extension considering what WE want from it.

We'd been considering selling both houses, and buying somewhere new, however the house prices (or rather what we consider to be value for money) and the lack of availability locally makes this a non starter for us, we just can't find anything really on the market that fits the bill that comes up for a price that we consider is worth it for us, or if it does, it requires quite heavy work to bring it into line with our vision of what we would like from our property.

Which brings us eventually (sorry for the rambling!) back to my late grandmother's house, and the prospect of keeping it, extending it, and fully modernising it.

Advantages of doing so:

* The move would be simple, as the property is owned outright by myself so no mortgage would be necessary. And funds are available (to a point) for extensions and alterations without the need for loans/remortgaging. Leaving then only the decision as to whether to sell our current house to re-stock our savings, or switch the mortgage to a buy-to-let, and drip feed our personal income with some rental income.

* The property is in a very sought after area with great schools close by, and exceptionally strong house prices, now, and historically.

* There is ample land to the rear of the property, plenty to comfortably extend into, whilst still retaining plenty of garden (the property as it stands occupies probably about 10 - 15% of the entire area)

* There is ample off street parking both at the front, and potentially to the rear of the property as it has private road access to the rear, where a garage once stood. Something our current property is somewhat lacking

* Any extension and alterations could be carried out with the property unoccupied, as we have our current house to live in

* On a purely emotional point, the house has been in my family for 60+ years. My late mother grew up there, and keeping it in the family, but with our generation's stamp on it appeals to my sentimentality.

The house would need to be extended rearwards on two storeys to change it from a 2 bedroom, to a 3 bedroom (probably with master en-suite), and the lower floor extended to allow for a larger kitchen/diner area. I'm thinking a 3m upper and 6m lower rear extension to extract more room from the house, which should also comply with current permitted development rights (I appreciate these are up for review in May of 2019, if this idea gets going, it'd never be completed by that time).

And then as a minimum, the rest of the original house would require complete gutting and re-plastering, complete re-wiring, and the original remaining footprint would require solid wall insulation to bring it inline with more modern standards (one would assume the extension would be built with cavity wall construction methods) Add to this the cost of a new kitchen, and two new bathrooms.

My concern would be that to carry out all this work would cost more than the added value it may add to the property, but as this is about creating a family home long into the future, adding value is not the main concern for me, it's creating the perfect family home. Although as mentioned property values on this particular street are incredibly strong, and I've witnessed other very similar houses on the street that have been extended and modernised sell very quickly for considerably more than the value the estate agents have placed on this house when I had it valued.

Sorry about my ramblings, but this is all very new to me, and I'm wondering what my first steps should be regarding the feasibility of this vision?

Obviously, I need to speak to builders, decent ones with a decent reputation and portfolio and get some estimates, and keep in mind that estimates and quotations are not the same?

Regarding plans and drawings, is this something that should be talked about with an architect BEFORE approaching builders?

I'm really unsure as to the chronology of this, and what I should be doing first?

Any other thoughts, ideas/criticism, or relevant input into my rambling also most welcome.

sooty&sweep

Hi

I'd firstly look on some local estate agent websites & or go in and have a chat to assess the current value of your Grandmother's property & what the value would likely become if you extend. This will allow you to assess if it's financially worth doing.

If you decide to go ahead you'll need plans & planning permission to then get quotes from builders.

If you decide this is your forever home then it's worth spending the money to turn it in to what you want.

Cheers

Jen

Matt5_2

sooty&sweep wrote: »

Hi

I'd firstly look on some local estate agent websites & or go in and have a chat to assess the current value of your Grandmother's property & what the value would likely become if you extend. This will allow you to assess if it's financially worth doing.

If you decide to go ahead you'll need plans & planning permission to then get quotes from builders.

If you decide this is your forever home then it's worth spending the money to turn it in to what you want.

Cheers

Jen

Hi Jen, thankyou for your input.

The house as it currently stands was valued in November at £200k. At the time of valuation the idea of possibly living there was not in my mind, so I didn't really discuss possible values if the property was extended and modernised. However, a house further up the street that is of the same original footprint, which has been extended rearwards in a similar manner (although I'm pretty sure it's a 3m two storey extension rather that 6m lower, 3m upper), and that had been fully modernised by a developer sold in August for £270k.

As for planning permission, my idea was to make all the alterations fall within permitted development rights, thereby not needing any planning permission. The only sticking point being that PDR as it is ends in May 2019, and although the consensus on the web seems to think this will be extended, I cannot take that for granted.

So the first step in any extension before looking for builders would be to find an architect to talk about your requirements, and then have plans drawn up?

FreeBear

Ignore the "current market value" - You have inherited the property, so it hasn't cost you anything. If you sell it now for £200K, you have £200K "profit" in the bank. Or spend £75K on extending & modernising and sell next year for £275K, and you still get £200K "profit". That said, you would probably get clobbered for capital gains tax....

If you love the house and area, take the opportunity to modernise and extend before moving in - Sounds like there is a lot of work to do, so it makes sense to do it all whilst the place is unoccupied. Then when you are ready, sell your current home (as long as it is still your primary residence, you should avoid any CG tax).

Any "profit" on the inherited property is an academic paper exercise and doesn't give you any extra money in your pocket until you sell. Who is to say what the state of the housing market is going to be like in five or ten years time - House prices could continue increasing, or the whole market crashes.

Doozergirl

A second storey extension is unlikely to fall under permitted development rights on a semi-detached house as the eaves height is limited to 3 metres within 2 metres of a boundary and second storeys aren't allowed on the side of a property under PDR.

You'd have to go through formal neighbour consultation on the 6 metre extension anyway and complete the project by May (as it stands) which is nigh on impossible given that there are no plans yet.

There's no issue with gaining Planning Permission, so just do it that way. It sounds like a lovely project to take the house forward for your family's future.

sooty&sweep

Hi

By the sounds of it you've made the decision of what you want to do.

Have a think about what your dream layout would be for this house. You don't have to do it all at once. Things like staircases & bathrooms can move !
Don't be frightened of needing to get planning permission. It's better to get the layout you want & get planning permission rather than compromise to stay within permitted development & then look back & think what if. Once you've got planning permission & you've started the project the planning permission won't lapse so you can do things in phases.

You need to have drawings because you'll struggle to get proper quotes from builders without them. Be warned when you're renovating an old property it will be very difficult to get a quote that covers everything & you will probably still end up with extra costs on top of the original quote. It is very difficult to fully assess everything that needs doing until you've started ripping everything apart.

We used a gentleman to draw plans & then confirm we didn't need planning permission. The aspect of our build that did need planning permission was covered by planning permission we'd got 10 years earlier but we didn't complete that aspect then. A good local architect will be able to help you finalise your design whilst also understanding planning constraints.

Good Luck

Jen