Apartment converted from offices - anything to be aware of?

Doozergirl

Great article, red fraggle! 

In addition to all those points, we've seen floorplans on these boards for these permitted development conversions and they don't meet the building regulations either with things like windows entirely missing from bedrooms, no fire break corridor between between bedrooms and kitchens, making you trapped in an airless box with no escape other than via rescue if fire breaks out at night.   This will also render them unmortgageable.  

There can be general lack of light because of the restrictions on external changes. 

OP, I would not touch most office conversions with a barge pole, though your decision may already be made if you need a mortgage and others haven't gotten one. It will be the property, not the people.  The MMA is a way for the agents to make money on a property that most people can't buy.  You put down a significant non-refundable deposit and can't get a mortgage either so just lose several thousand.  

It would be interesting to see the floorplans of this one.   We have seen a couple out to the west of London on this board.  

Emily_Joy

May I please thank everyone for their thoughts. Room sizes seem quite sensible - living room 10 by 3 meters, bedrooms 3.9 by 2.7 and 5 by 3.5 meters. Kitchen is a bit small - 3 by 3 meters, no wall  fully separated from the living room. The estate agent claims the only reason the buyers have had difficulty with mortgage was because is an office conversion.

I have been tenant/lodger for about 10 years (in UK, US, Switzerland and Poland). I started this job in July and I am renting a room now. In the area I am in Mon-Fri doesn't appear to be any cheaper than full time, but the downside of Mon-Fri let is that if I have a flight from London airport on Sunday then I would need to go home on Friday only to be catch an bus/train to London on Sunday. It makes more sense to stay till Sunday. Another downside of the present arrangement is heating. It is about 15C in the kitchen at the moment and the landlord says he cannot afford to put heating on to heat it up. It is causing me health problems Another consideration is that the working arrangements are irregular/flexible. I travel locally and abroad  on business quite often and I don't need to be in every day. For instance, in December, I spent there only 8 nights - but still paid a monthly rent with landlord telling me "there is no way we can have heating on around lunch time on a Saturday".

With these considerations it seems to me I would be better off with buying a property. I could then take a lodger and have control over heating if nothing else. It would also be easy to rent, if need be.

Doozergirl

I don't think anyone's going to say you shouldn't buy, but these types of property are a known liability unless you are a cash buyer, there is a significant discount and you don't really care if you die when the place catches fire - ie. You're a scummy landlord.  

Emily_Joy

No problem - happy to share the floor plan!

elsien

Mortgage issues aside, I would also be wanting to know the size of the block, how many other apartments are being crammed in there, and if people are struggling to get mortgages because it is an office conversion then who will the other owners/tenants be? Because if it's primarily cash buyers, you're probably talking buy to let and possible have neighbours that you may not choose otherwise. 
I'd also want to know about soundproofing and fire issues. Have you checked the planning consent on the LA portal to see what was agreed/has been put in place?

Doozergirl

Emily_Joy said:

No problem - happy to share the floor plan!

One living room window expected to provide natural light to a depth of nearly 13 metres.  

One window shared between beds one and two with a stud wall doing to work to divide it.  The window size and orientation to bed is 2 clearly inappropriate.    How
much direct sun can that room ever possibly get? 

No windows to either bathroom.  Not the end of the world but you'd hope that at least one had natural light.  Long length for extraction ducting to reach outside - it needs to be powerful to prevent mould build up as pressure decreases with each metre.  

Imagine if that flat faces anywhere but South.  It will get hardly any natural sun and be dingy. 

Wasn't originally designed as a home and is subsequently badly designed as a home.  

daveyjp

Some older properties lend themselves to conversion, this isn't one of them.

Its a conversion designed to be sold to overseas investors who will never visit the property.

MMA is also to be avoided,  its generally used on difficult to sell properties, because there is no other reason to use it.

Bradden

I lived in a converted office building for a year. It was completeed undered permitted development which resulted in the windows being retained. They did not open and the building was uncomfortably hot in the summer.

ComicGeek

To be honest though, if the flat faces South it's likely to absolutely bake in the summer months with that amount of glazing. That looks like all of the other rubbish office conversions that we work on. 

What are the heating and hot water systems? What is the EPC rating for the property, which will also have lots of good information about insulation, heating system performance? A lot of developers put electric panel heaters in these type of developments, which cost a fortune to run with the rubbish insulation/glazing.

If you're looking to possibly rent in the future, then important to have an EPC rating of C or better. I know of a lot of schemes we're working on at the moment where the developers are desperately trying to scrape a C rating to attract investors. 

eddddy

The auctioneers are listing it as "Cash Buyers Only" - so I guess they're fairly sure you wouldn't get a mortgage.  But it might be interesting to ask them why. 

(It was only converted a 2 or 3 years ago, so it's strange that the developers didn't convert it to a mortgageable standard.)


And the auction listing confirms that there'd be a reservation fee of over £10k for this property: 

This property is sold subject to payment of a non-refundable reservation fee of 4.20% to a minimum of £6,000.00 including VAT.

Any successful purchaser will pay this to secure the sale. The reservation fee is in addition to the purchase price. Please take this into account when bidding.

A non-refundable Reservation fee must be paid by the buyer within 2 hours following the conclusion of the auction or acceptance of an offer. 

So it would be super-risky to bid on the property in the hope of finding a mortgage lender. If you fail to find a lender, you'd lose the £10k+.

(And there are other ways you could lose the £10k as well.)


Edit to add....

It's EPC rating is C