Has anyone ever bought the house next door?

[Fibrous]

we are mid terrace on a really nice street in a lovely village that has few larger properties. The house next door will be coming on the market soon, they’re end terrace. My DP and I have looked to buy a house together for some time but struggled to find anything we like in the area we like. Our terraces are pretty good value for money compared to the 2/3 bed detached bungalows we’re looking for.

I own the terrace we live in and have a tiny mortgage left. He could afford to buy next door himself and is a first time buyer so wouldn’t pay any stamp duty, compared to the ~18k if we bought a place together,

the wall between the properties isn’t load bearing so it would be easy to knock through. However, I’m not sure we’d want to do more than just put a doorway between the houses. I think we’d prefer to keep them as two houses for financial reasons and to have a bit of space from each other (we both work from home), and also to future proof things - should we want to let one out or sell one (or split up!)

this is pretty niche - I don’t know where to start to get advice. I can pay my mortgage off if I need to reduce complications. But I imagine his mortgage company might object to us putting a door between the properties. Would anyone else likely care? I guess our insurers? If it’s locked on both sides, would that count as a secure dwelling?

im not sure if this is madness or a sensible thing to do. Our next door neighbour owns the two on the other side and has knocked through but she owns both and also did it decades ago when it was a bit more Wild West with property ownership.

unfortunately the houses are built into a hill with very small gardens so building a connecting walking at the back isn’t possible without some serious earthworks.

This eould be my dream scenario! But I like my own space. Are you planning to have kids?

Oh my god I would love that! Living next door to each other would honestly be my perfect setup!

It's pure genius.

.

You need to take the council tax considerations into account too. My friend bought the house next door and knocked through to make 1 dwelling but for council tax it's 2 properties and the second property is now taxed as a second home so 100% increase.

Yes we bought the terrace house next door. Kept the actual houses separate and took down the back garden fence. It worked for us, we rented out 2 upstairs rooms, shared the kitchen and (downstairs) bathroom during office hours with the tenants. The 2 ground floor rooms were used as home offices, I needed the rooms back in my house as I was having a baby. It was easy to return to 2 separate dwellings when we moved. I'm not sure knocking through to make 2 into 1 is a good idea financially, it might be better to sell up and buy somewhere bigger together.

I'm with @Joopy and @Kelim !! Didn't Helena Bonham Carter do that with Tim Burton when they were together - they had a connecting door between the properties but otherwise had their own space.

My parents knocked two houses into one to create our house growing up, but if you are planning on keeping them as two houses im not sure I'd even bother doing that? Why not just take down the divide in the back garden and then you can just pop out of the back door in your house into his house. Then you don't have to worry about anything like council tax, building regs etc.

This is my ideal scenario too!I would lean towards keeping them as two houses but like a PP said maybe sharing the garden - sure you're not planning to split up but financially I think two separate properties makes better sense.

Sounds brilliant, do it!

Yeah we’re both in our forties and I’m well past having kids. We have multiple pets. Definitely planning on opening up the garden. My ideal would be two separate houses (I have been fantasising about throwing all his crap next door since this came up). I could have a dedicated yoga space, he could have all his gaming stuff next door. It would be good to have a doorway connecting the houses so that we could have a dining room in his house, I’d have the main kitchen. And also for sleeping - we quite often end up moving to another bed due to snoring/illness/pets hogging the bed. So it would be nice to go to a proper bedroom next door without having to go outside.

re council tax - as we’d qualify for the single person discount and the houses are a pretty low band anyway, it doesn’t work out that much more expensive to run one house each, and yeah I think if we combined houses the band would go right up, but would prob be around the same. We can both afford to run one house each, they’re pretty cheap to heat.

I think this is a great idea! Just make sure you have boundaries in place around when you and he can access each others houses etc. IE can you both just walk in? DO you have to knock? I know you are not thinking about this at the moment but when we were house hunting last year, we went to see three houses that had been converted into one house and all of them were a bit weird. Two were later taken off the market as they didnt sell, and the third they converted back into two houses. Just a consideration!

I think it sounds really romantic as well!

We've lived together for 13 years already so it would be free access between each house but he would get to make decisions on his and me on mine.

I think you could knock through and make a house that works cohesively, but you would definitely lose (significant) money on it all. I think if we were doing that we'd want to be sure we were going to stay there and never split up!

We frequently talk about this and putting DHs parents in the house on his other side.

I would be so happy with that arrangement

My dream scenario! Go for it. Well jel, lol

If you want to knock through and make it into one house that's a completely different scenario to just putting an adjoining door in. Both are perfectly feasible. Best to do one or the other rather than something in between.

Sounds great to me. Surely you can just put in a door between without telling mortgage providers? Could easily be put back to wall if you move. Your dp gets an asset too. If you do split up it would be a bit awkward living next door. Do you draw straws on who moves?

I would put a connecting door in but keep quiet about it. So it’s 2 separate houses for council tax purposes etc. Then if you need to sell one or both just block the door back up again. It’s actually genius.

Yeah I thought a sneaky door would be the best approach. The walls are a single brick thick (you can hear everything) so it would be easy enough to have done.

We did this with 2 small flats. Except, in the end, we didn't knock through as we tried to do it properly and involved the council (building control) as the architect calculating the beam told us we should. Big mistake! They treated it as a conversion and wanted fully up to date building regs, fire doors etc in both. The architect said when we sold, we'd have to say if we had made any alterations and it would be tricky if we didn't do it properly.

That said, buying next door has been the best thing ever, even if we're not using it as we planned. We go out one front door and in the other, it's not a problem.