How much value does a garden add to a property?

[Didimum]

Thinking ahead to remortgaging (next year). I was wondering if anyone had any experience or an educated guess as to what % increase you can expect on a property by adding a garden that previously didn’t have one.

We bought the house last year – a family home. The ‘back garden’ was a fully concreted space/drive way with a dilapidated double garage (unusable), open to the road. For this reason, the house struggled to sell. It sat on the market for a year and was lowered in asking price twice. It last had been sold in 1970. We turned the ‘driveway’ into a proper landscaped garden by walling it off from the road and also retained a driveway. The garden is around 900sq ft. We got rid of the garage, but do have both a loft, cellar and added garden storage.

Any ideas? Thanks!

For remortgage purposes - nothing. The square footage of house and land are unchanged, just redesigned.

For resale, a garden will make the house more attractive to some buyers, to others a garage would have been preferable - if they need storage or to commute.

Yes, all the houses have gardens here in the immediate area, none have garages, hence why it’s a bit of a unique situation. The house across the road to us, which is near-enough identical, sold for 130k more 2.5yrs ago, and the only difference is that it had the garden. Though it’s hard to find other price comparisons as most houses are either unique and extremely different to ours.

We had a new garden room included in our remortgage about 5yrs ago – the lender came out and looked at it, which our broker requested.

The other thing op, is it not a very small garden, about 30 feet by 30 feet? Or some variation of? Which is postage stamp size. And why the garage and drive took up the whole thing?

if this is correct, then it would be ludicrous to think it added 20 percent to the value, if it’s not right, what is the measurements?

Increased square footage in the house adds value. If you’d actually bought a plot of land adjacent and turned that into a garden, you could add on the value of that. But you’re talking about redesign of existing space.

I’d have to go and measure properly, but it was a guesstimation. It’s definitely ample for the area, would be described as ‘average’. The garage didn’t take up the whole thing – it took up about a third and the rest was concreted over, on sharply slopes land and not walled/fenced in.

I don’t think it adds 20%, I have said many times that ‘up to 20%’ is just the data I could find online for landscaped gardens vs non-landscaped gardens. I’m not saying I agree with that.

My point is that the lender added value for the garden room, which they came to look at when we remortgaged.

Ok so it’s three times the size of a double garage, that’s a very small garden op.

Yes, and as I say that’s because you added square footage to your house. That will always add value.

And to be clear 3 double garages would be twice the size you guesstimated.

People like back gardens
Not side gardens

OP: your title question seems to ask if a house with a garden is more valuable than a house without. Based on the or use that before you did your improvements your house didn’t have a garden.

But it did, albeit a crap one.

Of 3 scenarios:
House with no outdoor land
House with horrible concreted outside land
House with same land nicely landscaped
the ‘added value’ of your house is between the second and third scenarios, NOT the difference between 1 and 3. So much less relevant to do with a mortgage valuation.

Adding a garden room is increasing the physical size of the house.

But anyway, in the end this is between you and your lender.

I hope it works out the way you need.

As previously stated, a garage can add value to the home. Your argument that houses near you don’t have garages so you haven’t lost any value doesn’t work because having a garage in an area without garage may make the garage more sought after and therefore more value to the house price.

You’ve likely lost some value due to taking away the garage. You’ve likely added a small value by landscaping a concreted area. But overall it’s not going to have changed a lot. You have increased the size of the plot or sq footage of the house. Take into account house price changes over the year and you might not have added any value. If you want to move up the LTV ratio, save money to nudge you into the next bracket.

The value you have added is that, in your area, a garden is likely to be more attractive than a garage and concrete area. That means it will sell quicker and more people might be interested, which may drive the price up slightly if you can get a bidding war. That also relies on setting the price low enough to begin with. However, you aren’t interested in selling and for remortgage purposes it’ll be a desktop valuation because you haven’t done anything significant enough to trigger an in-person valuation.

In my area an extra bedroom adds on circa 14%, e.g. 3 beds go for about £700k, 4 beds around the £800k mark.

20% of standard house value in my area would be £140k; I wouldn't have thought that a 3 bed with a nice garden would go for the same as a 4 bed (they all have at least a patch of grass).

Renovating the garage instead of removing it would probably have added a decent amount of extra value, given they are uncommon in your area. Having a garage effectively equals more indoor space (even if used for storage), in a way that a garden cannot be.

Regarding the two vaulations. Once used HPI, the other valued it much higher. I have no idea why.

I think the garden is too small. If they’d renovated the garage, she’d still need hard standing in front of it, to access, hence the previous lay out due to size of the space available

the op has retained a driveway in this. I can’t comprehend how she’s done this and still has the same amount of parking for cars as before and a garden as well, that doesn’t make sense really.

she said 900 sq foot. So a double garage would be half of that. So it would be half garage, half drive/parking. But she says it was 3rd of it, so her initial measurement was off. Either way, even if a third, there would be no room left for a garden with a double garage. It is one or the other, garden/drive or garage/parking/drive. So they knocked down and went for a small garden instead.

will it have added value, maybe. The lack of a garden would have been an issue, and if other houses have no garages either as gardens are so small. Garages do add value, but not if they are at the expense of rhe garden due to limited space.

There’s a house that comes up in my search area. Nice large 4 bed family house with parking. Someone is trying to flip it, but they removed the grass and covered the reasonably sized rear garden in purple slate chippings. So now the garden is unusable if you have kids (4 bed, very likely), or a dog (cut feet).
Back to the OP, is the garden now totally private? For a family house, people want grass, but if they have teenagers, less important. If the garage was dilapidated then it didn’t add any value to the house, however a good garage and a nice seating area would be worth as much as a small garden, at least. Garages are valuable.

It depends, some people don't want the maintenance of a garden. Sometimes I feel this is the problems with proctors now, everyone makes changes based on a potential buyer so everything ends up the same

Proctors?

????

Oh! Properties! It seems everyone changes their home to some generic sellable thing, nothing is unique anymore

I see a lot of properties being sold be the elderly with low maintenance gardens. However they were usually last renovated in the 80’s and 90’s, so today an older person wouldn’t want to buy and renovate the house, despite being attracted to the garden, while a family would not want the paved back garden plus renovation.
These places seem particularly difficult to shift, if inappropriately priced.

I think it’s even more nuanced than that, it is the difference between

House with horrible concreted outside land and double garage,
House with same land nicely landscaped, and no garage.

the garage would have been inc in the valuation of the overall property initially, in the total value.

so what’s the difference in value between the two, if any.