property advice

[MNuTz]

Hi all,

Well we are in the process of looking for our first house and yesterday we viewed our first house. Built in 1934 and has a lot of potential to be turned into a nice house but is at the top of our current budget (£135K).

I also found a piece of land for sale with a brick building on it, it has 1.29 acres of land and is situated in lovely surroundings in the country. However, the estate agents info on their website indicates that it already has planning permission to turn the brick building into an agricultural building. I popped to see it last night and the building seems to be a partial build that was never finished and could easily be finished and turned into a nice house.

Ive emailed the estate agents about it but havent had a reply yet.

I was wondering how i could go about finding out more about the land, its history (ie why the build there was never finished) and more importantly whether i could get planning permission to turn it into a house without going through the estate agents??

The land is going for £30-£40K and has a lot of potential and would leave us with £90-£100K for finishing it off but i dont know if you could get a mortgage under such circumstances. Anyone know the best way to approach this financially?

Thanks

 

[mr tommo]

Probably the easiest bet is to go and ask the neighbours. They would have had some sort of relationship with the builder and may know why it wasn't finished. My dads friend for example, went round to all the neighbours, to show them plans and to let them know the timescale and anything else that may or may not affect them. £30-40 seems awfully cheap... I get the feeling planning may have been refused or would not be availible for housing.

If you were to build and finish this house, you could expect to make a profit of around 75% of what you have put in, when you come to sell it.

 

[sidthesexist]

as far as planning permision go to the local council planning dept? each different council seems to handle things differently

 

[Bill101]

it might be in the green belt which means it can only be used for agricultural purposes and that's why the house was never finished