Gymbalow-ya

[WibbleBoy]

We're looking into moving house, and one of the properties we were considering looking at is at the upper end of our price range, but close enough to the city centre to make it worth looking at.

It took me 5 minutes to find the house on Google Street View, and something looked strange. The property on Google had an attached garage, which was not mentioned in the sale literature.

After some more digging, I discovered that the land has been split in two, with the garage and side garden now geing regarded as a separate property. And they have planning permission to build a 3 bedroom detached house on the land.

According to the plans, the new house will be approxiomately 2 feet away from the house which is for sale, and is ridiculously small. The ground floor is 8.5m x 5m, and the 1st floor is 8.5m x 7.6m. Yes, the extra 2.4m on the first floor is built on stilts over the double car port.

Parking in this new house will consist of reversing around a corner into the 2.3 metre wide gap between a tree, the house, and two reinforced pillars.

I'm shocked that (a) they managed to get planning permission for this, and (b) that there's no mention of this development in the literature for the existing house.

What does this thread title mean?

Wow, that sounds like a nightmare. Imagine the hassle of the building works for months. Just as well you found out about it before falling in love with the house! clearly the previous owner has sacrificed garden for greed. I think outside space is a premium asset in a town, but previous owner clearly wanted the cash in their back pocket.

Am astounded the EA did not have more details and information to tell you beforehand. Can't see how they are going to get three bedrooms out of that floor space either. I can see that they plan two doubles and a single, but personally I think a bedroom should have room to move around in, not just contain a bed!

I don't understand the thread title

The floor space is fine for 3 bedrooms - works out at 107 square metres which isn't outrageous or tiny.

Our current house is the same size - bedrooms are 18ft by 10, 16ft by 9 and about 10ft square. Hardly cupboards! We have a very similar setup, house goes over a garage so is bigger at the top than the bottom.

I'm sure that building regs say that all new houses must have a downstairs loo, however small the house.

Wtf is the title?

The thread title refers to an MMer whose neighbours built a 'gymbalow' in the back garden. Planning agreed to a single storey home gym but the neighbours made it into another house which they moved into and let their own home as an HMO. The gymbalow was extremely close to the boundary and left the OP extremely overlooked.

Thank you @KermitsLoveChild - bloody cliquey thing of the OP to do.

Is it really 100m2? Flooor plan looks more ackward than that?

That's based on the dimensions op gave in the first post - comes out to 107sqm.

It's probably in the mid to high 90s in reality as the upstairs has a couple of cut outs - it isn't full depth in all places.

Statistically challenged, I only make that top floor 66.3 m2. The figures given were 8.5x7.8. Then take out space for the bathroom, stairway, landing, cut outs. that is tiny!

Yes...the top is 8.5 by 7.6. The bottom is a further 42.5 though which gives a total of 107. I'm not sure what you are getting at, I didn't say upstairs was 107.

Roughly 100 square metres goes firmly in the big standard 3 bed semi box size wise. There's bigger and smaller but a quick look at floor plans for 3 beds for sale in my city turned up loads around those sizes.