Would you buy a two bed house needing a future extension?

[basilandparsley753]

Hi all, just looking for some advice...

We have just sold our house and are relocating to another part of the country and hoping to buy our forever home. We were outbid on a lovely house in our ideal location this week (gutted), but have now found another property on the same road that is affordable for us. The only problem is its not quite suitable as it only has 2 beds. We really wanted 3, so that we have a guest bedroom for family to stay in when they come to visit and also a bit more space for us. Day to day we only actually need 2 bedrooms for us and DS who is 17. The property is detached and has a large garden with lots of room to extend, and lots of other properties on the road seem to have extensions. Would you buy a property knowing that it really needed an extension before you would be really happy with it? Or is this a foolish thing to do given that we might not get planning permission, plus doing the work could be a nightmare!

I've been watching the housing market in the town for the last few years, and I know its quite slow. 3 bed properties in our budget and in areas we like don't come up very often at all, so I'm really worried that we won't find anything before our buyers start to get fed up, so I'm trying to come up with a plan B!

Other options I've thought of are renting (we don't really like this idea though, had some bad experiences in the past) or buying a cheaper house in an area we're not sure about and then selling on when we've saved more money.

What would you do?

Can you afford the extension?

stay in contact with the agent, even put a note through the door for the other property, be ready on that if this one falls through.

It’s a detached house with a large garden and it’s in a road that you already know you like.

If you have the funds for an extension, you sound as though you have the room and if other houses have extended, that’s set the precedent I’d have thought.

I think I’d go with that, providing you’re pretty sure you can extend, then you can have the extension that suits your needs. It will be a pain whilst the work is going on, but it’ll be great afterwards, especially if it’s a home you intend to stay in for some time.

Just don’t extend over the ceiling price of the road.

Thanks @Tortephant. We won't be able to afford it immediately, but would be in a good financial position to be able to save for it within a few years and without needing to take out a loan.

I have left our other offer on the table with the agent, but I don't want to pin my hopes on that.

How often would a spare room be used?
One of our spare rooms is used as an office and doesn't currently have a bed in it. The other us used regularly- DH goes in there if he's on a Stupid o'clock shift.

Thanks @Buscobel yes that's kind of what I'm thinking.

I'm now wondering whether its possible to check out likely planning permission before we buy? Or if we just have to take the risk and hope it will be granted! Something I'll need to look into I think!

If the extra bedroom was for guests only and all else was fine - yes.
I’ve never lived in an house with a spare bedroom; we cater for family only!
How often do you have guests that this would be an issue?

@MrsMoastyToasty @KilkennyCats thank you, very good points! I'm not actually sure and we'd need to think more about how the rest of the house would work for us day to day without the extension (and not just thinking about the guest space issue).

We've never had a spare room either and our current house is 2 bed and smaller than what we're looking at. But as we are moving 3.5 hours away from family, we really wanted somewhere they could stay with us when they came to visit.

I bought a two bed with room at the side to extend because the location was perfect. It’s worked out really well and I have gained a downstairs shower room and utility underneath.

You are allowed to extend up to a certain %age of the original footprint without planning permission, but it sounds like you’d have no problem getting it anyway.

It depends.

We did, but at 26/27. We lived in a building site for the best part of 9 years to be honest to get the house how we wanted it as we’ve renovated in affordable chunks.

We’re 37/39 now and have a lovely, relatively large, home in a nice part of town and our mortgage is affordable - we only have 14 years left. If we were buying the house on the open market at its current value we’d have to take a 30+ year term to make it affordable.

would I do it again… probably not! It was stressful, expensive, the house was in constant disarray and it strained mine and DH’s relationship.

Could you do a single storey extension to add a downstairs bedroom and bathroom that falls within permitted development? If so, you wouldn't need to worry about planning permission

Yes I would buy a property with only 2 bedrooms and extend at a later date especially if the house ticked lots of boxes. Good luck in whatever you chose.

It’s likely cheaper to pay for accommodation for your visitors plus you won’t get fed up of each other!

Garden offices room in the garden is an option too.

But yes I would consider buying it, location location location.

You could start off with a lovely sofa bed in the living room and see how it goes. DS may move out in a few years time. You might prefer to spend a bit of the extension money on putting up guests in the local b and b, if you don't have guests too often (as we get older, we wish we had decided that, because accommodating guests is now hard work). You might decide on an insulated garden building instead, which would take minimal building. Take your time deciding, but grab the location and road that you love.

If the location is right, then go for it.

If the rest of the house works for you and there’s a large garden is a really good garden suite an option rather than extending? Extensions are sooooo expensive now, a downstairs bedroom isn’t for everyone. You could put in an amazing guest suite for significantly less than an extension- 17 year old also is unlikely to be at home forever so that will also potentially free up a room inside in the not too distant future.

@partystress that sounds great, thanks for sharing your experience. I didn't know that you could extend some % without planning permission. I'll look into that.

The more I think about it, the more I think we'd actually only need a fairly small single storey extension, and probably a lot of the issues could be dealt with by changing the existing layout to make the space work better. The location of this house is absolutely perfect, but that means that most of the properties on it are out of our price range!

@BlackBean2023 thanks for sharing your insight, that sound like a lot of work, and we are not in our 20s (or even 30s anymore)! Definitely needs a careful think!

@TheGoodOnesAreAllGone thanks, I didn't know that would be possible! Yes, I think we'd only be looking to add maybe one room and perhaps a second loo / shower room on the ground floor. I think the rest of the issues could be solved with some remodelling of the interior.

@Advocodo - thanks for your positive message! This house ticks so many boxes. Now trying not to get my hopes to high, in case someone else gets in there with a better offer that we can't match, like last time!

@RandomMess thanks for those ideas, yes a hotel is always an option! I love the idea of a garden room. Absolutely, I'm fast learning that location is my number one thing. We haven't moved in 18 years, and I didn't realise how lucky we are with our current location until I started house hunting!

@SusanJJ Yes, we thought we could initially have guests stay in the living room with a sofa bed, as you don't need to access it to get to other bits of the house (unlike in our current house). That's really good advice. I definitely like the idea of taking our time to decide about the house. I don't think we'd need to rush given that its already significantly bigger than our current 2 bed, but agree about getting in there for the chance to live in our dream location.

Thanks @parietal ! These replies are all making me think that too!

@Helpwithabuildingissue garden suite is such a good idea, and definitely realistic given the size of the garden. And yes DS will move out at some point, so that will eventually give us extra room. I think its definitely possible we could make it work even without an extension.

Very late to this, but sounds similar to us. 2 double bedrooms and generally it’s enough. We added a garden room which is great for when we entertain/DH wants to watch footy in peace/DS has friends round, and we have a sofa bed/decent Z bed thing for when my mum stays over a couple of times a year. We all more than manage for how often we have more than just us 3 in the house, and means we have a mortgage we can comfortably afford

Has the property been extended already? If not you might be able to do the extension under permitted development. Have a look at the planning portal on what is and is not permitted, and check that your property is not excluded due to being listed, or because the council has issued an Article 4 direction for the road/area the property is located in, restricting permitted development rights. Any Article 4 directions have to be published on the council's website.

Also, have a look at the local council's planning portal as you can search that to see historic applications for the road and will be able to see if extensions were granted under permitted development rights or by planning permission. From a browse of the documents you can see if they sailed through or any issues.

If planning permission is needed, it is important to remember that each case is decided on its own merits and there is no guarantee you will get planning permission just because others have. But the odds are greater if materially what you want to do is similar and would meet the council's policy on extensions (likely if the others did). The council's policy will be set out in a published supplementary planning document (SPD)

The council will probably also have a pre-planning advice service and you can use that to see the likelihood of it being granted.

Hope that helps.

When I was looking I wanted a bungalow that needed an extension however, even with my bf's contacts it was going to be £30k without fittings.

I've only ever had 2 bedrooms but with my home now I've converted part of the garage into another room.

I agree with pp that paying for a hotel for guests would be cheaper. Building work is extremely expensive now. I would not think it’s worthwhile for an occasionally used spare bedroom.

I was nearly closing on a 2 bed home (have only one DC) but deal didn’t work out. We later found another house 10 mins away from the previous one. It worked better for us because my husband’s elderly parent stayed with us for 6 months and I couldn’t have coped without the small extra bed room. If there is a possibility of a guest needing to stay longer it can be a hassle. When we were renting before we always managed with 2 bed and a sofa bed for guests for a night or two. Also extensions are really expensive there days and I expect costs to only go higher.