Converting house into a maisonette?

Alderbank

DomSully40, being a landlord carries a lot of duties and requirements.
I don't think you have the knowledge and experience to be a successful landlord.
Go on a course to learn what you have to do.
You might have second thoughts afterwards.

DomSully40

Alderbank said:

DomSully40, being a landlord carries a lot of duties and requirements.
I don't think you have the knowledge and experience to be a successful landlord.
Go on a course to learn what you have to do.
You might have second thoughts afterwards.

Thanks mate - I’d use a company to be honest 

hazyjo

DomSully40 said:

Alderbank said:

DomSully40, being a landlord carries a lot of duties and requirements.
I don't think you have the knowledge and experience to be a successful landlord.
Go on a course to learn what you have to do.
You might have second thoughts afterwards.

Thanks mate - I’d use a company to be honest 

Ultimately, you're still responsible though, and really should know what those responsibilities are. You don't want to risk a fine or, heaven forbid, a prison sentence. Not all agencies will be good, and mistakes can be made. We're all human! You should know what paperwork to expect from them.

DomSully40

hazyjo said:

DomSully40 said:

Alderbank said:

DomSully40, being a landlord carries a lot of duties and requirements.
I don't think you have the knowledge and experience to be a successful landlord.
Go on a course to learn what you have to do.
You might have second thoughts afterwards.

Thanks mate - I’d use a company to be honest 

Ultimately, you're still responsible though, and really should know what those responsibilities are. You don't want to risk a fine or, heaven forbid, a prison sentence. Not all agencies will be good, and mistakes can be made. We're all human! You should know what paperwork to expect from them.

Absolutely, I wouldn’t have it any other way, it would have to be all 100% legal. Which is why I’m trying to gauge what is involved in doing it.

Theres plenty of mainsonettes about so it is definitely possible. 

Section62

DomSully40 said:

Theres plenty of mainsonettes about so it is definitely possible. 

Councils often built maisonettes alongside regular houses within their estates - the idea being to have a mix of property sizes to meet differing needs. In some cases there is very little external difference between flats/maisonettes/houses in council estates.

Do you know whether the local maisonettes have been converted, or were they built that way?

The main issues you'd have with a conversion are ensuring there is a safe (protected) means of access/egress, and also that the ground floor ceiling/upstairs floor provide adequate insulation/protection in relation to noise, fire, and smoke.  Generally achieving that with a LA built property is not very easy.

zagubov

This sounds complicated.
Are you thinking of your parents living mainly downstairs and they being the landlords for the lodgers upstairs?
This might well make your parents your tenants (putting a lot of requirements onto yourself).
This might even apply even if you're not charging them rent, but just giving them license to stay there.
Having a second kitchen might alarm your mortgage provider (unless maybe your faith requires you to cook some foods separately).
Having cookers/sinks in each room; does that make it an HMO?
How would toilet facilities be divided? Separate shower/WCs and a shared bathroom?
The upstairs bedrooms probably couldn't have external locks fitted.
Energy bills could be problematic.
This needs a lot of thought and I'd presume, more professional advice than us amateurs on an online forum could provide.

user1977

A floor plan might help, if you want some advice about how feasible it will be even physically to convert a terraced council house into two independent flats.

eddddy

Ath_Wat said:

eddddy said:

FreeBear said:

eddddy said: Instead, I'd have thought you could just have lodgers upstairs (e.g. a lodger couple or a lodger family) with the use of the upstairs kitchen, upstairs bathroom, and a door separating them from you to give them some privacy etc. (But I'm no expert on the rules and regs relating to lodgers.)

Put simply, if they have their own facilities, they would be tenants, not lodgers.

Yep - so presumably the OP can retain the right to use the upstairs facilities, but choose not to use them.

I'd be prepared to pay a lot less rent for that than I would for a properly separate flat.

Yes, they're very different propositions. Lodgers will always pay much less rent than tenants with their own facilities.

Converting a house into two flats (to meet building regs) will probably cost tens of thousands and will need planning consent, weeks of building work, etc - and it's possible that consent won't be granted anyway. 

On the other hand, if there is already an upstairs bathroom, and an upstairs room suitable for use as a kitchen / dining room - they could potentially get lodgers in almost immediately.


So it would probably take years to reach break even point and make a profit from converting a flat for renting, but it might only take a month or two to start making a profit from lodgers.

(But the eventual resale value of flats might be much higher.)

Joco

I undertook to convert my 1st and 2nd floor (ie 2-storey) maisonette into 2 maisonettes 5 years ago. Due to health problems, the stress involved of having a cowboy builder desert the project, taking most of the budget, an unhelpful building control company, rising costs etc, I am considering abandonning the project and putting in a kitchen and bathroom on the top floor. It will have its own front door and be closed off from the maisonette below, although access would have to be via that maisonette (my dwelling). As the gas, electricity and water supplies will be shared, I assume that people living on the top floor will count as lodgers, rather than tenants. If any service is provided, this is also a way of ensuring that they do not have the same rights as tenants. 
Other advantages of having lodgers rather than tenants are that there is the Rent a Room scheme which gives you an tax allowance of about £7000 a year or you can opt to declare expenses and save on tax that way. 
I am planning to include a 'fair use' allowance towards bills, based on my typical household bills to avoid lodgers using excessive amounts of gas and electricity.

FreeBear

Joco said: It will have its own front door and be closed off from the maisonette below, although access would have to be via that maisonette (my dwelling). As the gas, electricity and water supplies will be shared, I assume that people living on the top floor will count as lodgers, rather than tenants. If any service is provided, this is also a way of ensuring that they do not have the same rights as tenants.

Having their own entrance coupled with the fact that the accommodation would be self contained, the occupants would never be classed as lodgers. So they would be tenants with all the legal protections that come with it along with extra legal requirements from yourself as a landlord.

Shared utilities need not be a problem - Fit MID approved meters and bill the tenants at cost.