Extensions - how to proceed in what order?

[Willow3131]

Hi. We are wanting to do a single storey extension and have spoken to the mortgage provider who has confirmed we can increase our mortgage.
I'm a little confused as to how to go about things. Do we get a mortgage in principal before we contact an architect go draw up plans? And then get builders to estimate? What if the quotes are a lot more than what we've agreed in principal with the mortgage provider - do we then increase it as we should know the max they'll lend us? Sorry if I sound clueless, I feel clueless! Thank you.

Find out how much it's going to cost first.

We've just been through this and builders couldn't give us a true quote until we had full architect plans. The quotes ranged from £38.5k to £78k for the exact same spec! I'm sure you could get a rough quote though. Our mortgage lenders also wanted to see proof of the extension plans so we had to send off the builders quote & plans.

Architect/designer first, then planning permission if required (not always needed for single storey), then builder quotes, then mortgage company to release funds.

In terms of builders, cheaper isn't always better. Builder we chose gave us a detailed breakdown of costs (and potential time frame) and payment schedule - we also saw other work they'd done for friends of friends. This gave us more confidence that they knew what they were doing and weren't going to come back asking for additional cash (which had happened before on a smaller job - never again!). Also a couple of builders told us our plans wouldn't work (they did) and wanted to do things a different/ easier way. We didn't go with them either.

Thank you that is really helpful and appreciated :0)