Buying Two Terraced Houses to make into one house

ReadingTim

The fact you hardly ever see this done suggests how viable/sensible/popular an idea this is.... 

elsien

Not two terraces but Auntie bought two derelict cottages next to each other and knocked into one. Again, another time another place, because it involved a major re-building work – I think one of the walls fell down at one point – but she has a beautiful home now and you can’t tell it was ever two houses. Probably a lot less affordable nowadays. 

sammyjammy

My Mum and Dad did this years ago, a stipulation of the mortgage was that the two properties had to be joined within 7 days of completion, they were at different levels by about half a metre so a big hole knocked between the two lounges and a couple of steps job done, they upstairs remained separate, great for me and my sister who had bedrooms on the opposite side to my parents 

ProDave

Another twist on this is what of you want to convert them back to separate houses?

I did some of the work, joining two old cottages into one dwelling.  No issues doing that.

But wind forward 20 years, the owner, now a widow wanted to separate the cottages again so she could sell one and live in the other, just as before.  But the council said no, as the separated cottage would no longer meet building regs, things like width and steepness of stairs etc, and they would only allow them to be separated into 2 dwellings if both were brought up to current building regulations.

So they remain as one large cottage, under used because of the councils silly rules.

Grizebeck

Overall this idea has more negatives then positives!

elsien

Worked for Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter except theirs was basically two houses with an adjoining door. Works if you have very different tastes.


 ": "My house looks like something out of Beatrix Potter while he's got slime balls and dead Oompah Loompahs lying around, and skeletons and weird alien lights."

Ditzy_Mitzy

I've talked about this before on here, but a schoolfriend's parents owned a conjoined pair of semis that had been made into a single dwelling by virtue of various internal doors between the halves.  It just didn't work.  They wanted a large detached house, but ended up with two houses with two of everything: two kitchens, two drives, two sets of gardens, two garages etc.  All the systems were split, so there were two boilers and two lots of central heating, two immersion tanks, two gas meters and so on.  I don't even want to think about the wiring.  

Nothing was any 'better', in that everything was still only of the size and grandiosity applicable to a standard semi, but all was doubled.  

If, and only if, you were thinking of gutting the terraces and starting again from an empty shell, it might just be worthwhile.  Any other option regarding two houses is mad.  

UnderOffer

A family friend did this, however it was a ‘new build’ conversion of a derelict hospital. They bought 2 adjoining converted properties (imagine terraces), the builders agreed to an internal door downstairs from the living room, but they actually had 2 kitchens 2 lounges and 2 dining rooms, with 2 staircases going up to bedrooms and family bathroom in each property. It worked well for them, however as their children were teenagers they had no issue with them being the other side of the property accessed only from downstairs through lounge then up the separate stairs. 

The quirkiness didn’t end there, the front doors were located on different sides of the houses. You’d enter from front on left property but could exit out the “front door” at rear of right property, they effectively had different addresses, 14 Smith court, 8 Jones place! 
Council tax was one property but they did have 2 utility meters, used to amuse the meter reader who’d knock at no. 14 then a couple of hours later arrive at no. 8 where the same owner would answer the door. 

After 10 years they sold, blocked up the one internal door from lounge and sold the properties separately, incredibly quickly. 

This worked out well mainly as they negotiated with the builder at the very early stages of the development and conversion and followed their advice. 

BungalowBel

Just to say we also kept the Spanish properties that we joined together as two separate addresses with two sets of deeds and two lots of taxes, so that anyone buying it in the future could buy one, or the other, or both (as it happened we sold both to the same person).  All we would have needed to do was block the adjoining door up again.