Offering on a house that needs gutting

[IsItAllOverYetPlease]

I've seen a house online that we'll be viewing on Tuesday. It has potential to build upon garage to the side and we would also want to do at least a single storey rear extension but possibly also a loft conversion and make it a rear double extension if funds allow. We've never undertaken structural work to a home before so I'm not really sure what order we should do things. can you help?

I was thinking if our offer is accepted we would pay for a pre-application planning consultation with the council to get guidance on whether the proposed extension would be approved, but would we need to have plans drawn up before that happens? If the minimum extension wouldn't be allowed then we wouldn't want to complete on the sale. Fortunately a very large extension over 3 storeys was granted on the same road in December so I'm hoping that will at least be persuasive.

I hear builders are booked up for a year atm so the sale would be dependent on whether it's in a good enough state to live in with just minor repairs until we can get the work done. At what point should we get quotes? obviously we need to have an idea of cost before we can draw up plans.

Can anyone provide guidance please?

You could try a Ouija board.

I think you need to speak to people who’ve done similar work locally or builders to get costs

However, I read ‘if our minimum extension wouldn’t be allowed we wouldn’t complete on the sale’. Do the vendors know this, and is the house chain free?

I think it would be VERY wrong to allow others in a chain to get their hopes up , pay survey fees, possibly miss school application deadlines etc, because you haven’t done your homework! Do the research first and then decide to offer or not

Buy the house that you can live in now.. and save the extension as the plan for the future.

If it needs that much work to fit your plans from move in , it is not the house for you.

If my house had planning permission for an extension at sale time, I would sell it for much more.

Plans attach to properties, not the person who paid for them.

I like to buy houses that need gutting. I buy them on chance that I can get Planning’s permission and factor in a plan b if I can’t.
I don’t think your offer would be accepted on the basis it was subject to pp

Does your local town/council have a planning portal? See what other people locally have been able to do, usually there is a precedent set if someone has been allowed to do something

You’ve got a lot of ‘what ifs’ going on there. I wouldn’t accept an offer from you. But you can do the pre-application and you can get an idea of costs from various home building magazines before offering, if it’s still available.

You can put planning in before you buy, but you can’t really make approval a condition of sale, that’s not fair.

You would need to talk to the vendors about a potential planning application though because you will need to serve formal notice, and they would not be unreasonable to say no to this.

We put planning in on our house when we exchanged, just to speed things up a bit, but it still took a long time.

A cousin of mine did this - when planning was given the green light the sellers then put the price up as it was worth X amount more with it.

He did the research, paid for the plans, surveys, the whole lot, had builders lined up ready for when it completed. He had no comeback whatsoever.

My cousin couldn't afford to pay more and they sold it to someone else.

I would buy it as it is and go from there!

Many extensions are now permitted under permitted development, which basically means that the council check that they are within their rules with no need to apply for planning permission.
I don't know if it's a semi, terrace or detached but to over-simplify you should be able to extend 3m out the back with same height on a single story. However some councils don't like any building that is visible to the street so a side extension might be refused.
Note that the garage may not have foundations suitable for building over anyhow so you'd be tearing that down first.
The loft is trickier because it can be within permitted development but it depends on the design. The main thing to check is the pitch of the existing roof. If it's under 30 degrees or isn't 2.2m at the highest point (after sub-floor fitted), you'll have issues with planning.
As others have said, don't go ahead unless you can buy it either way. That's a very poor move on the chain.

Agree with PPs.

Also be aware OP that if the vendors get wind that you are considering only going ahead if you can afford your planned renovations once you’ve costed it up, and if you can get planning permission, then they will probably completely discount you as a serious buyer. I know I would. Far too many “ifs” for me to be confident that you’ll go through with the purchase.

Tread very carefully!

You might also want to take into consideration the soaring costs and long delays associated with building work at present - www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/15/building-crisis-looms-as-dwindling-supplies-bring-sites-grinding-to-a-halt

Not a good time for renovation - agree with @umbel

If you need a lot of work done to make it attractive to you, I wouldn't go for it in the current climate.

You can't get a proper quite until you have plans. You could ask a friendly builder to come to a second viewing with you to give you a ballpark figure but it'll be finger in the air stuff.

Its obviously finger in the air stuff and it depends on finish but you're probably somewhere around £2k per m2 and maybe £800 m2 renovation of existing house if it needs gutting. Obviously don't know the size of the house but what you're suggesting with multiple extensions, loft conversion, full refurb is likely to be pretty expensive but I guess you already know that.

• quote not quite

Thanks all. Looks like I'll need to do some more research on what an approximate cost would be. I wouldn't pull out of the property if our offer was accepted. I was more wondering what the order would be to do things after we move in. I guess get a builder over to give a rough quote, then speak to planning officer, then get plans drawn up before submitting them if needed.
I know its not a good time to be finding a builder but we've looked for over 6 months and haven't found anywhere suitable so it looks like we'll need to create it ourselves. We'd need to do some quick fixes on the kitchen and bathroom to make it liveable as it looks like there was a big leak at some point.

I sold a house once. The buyer was dragging their feet and we couldn't work out why. By chance, I discovered she had applied for planning permission before we had exchanged contracts. No doubt she would have pulled out if permission wasn't granted. She was informed that the price would go up 15% if planning was granted before we exchanged. Surprise, surprise we exchanged 2 days later. Cheeky bugger!