We're planning to sell the property from which our plot was formed soon.

 

It's a fairly large 3-bedroom 1950's 140m2 bungalow, standing in 0.5 acre of mature landscaped garden, in a highly secluded but desirable village location, close to amenities. The bungalow is solid and habitable (we've been living in it for the last 12 months), but would benefit from renovation. It has been valued at about £380-400k as it is. We haven't rushed to market with it because we ideally want to wait for Spring, when the garden comes alive as it is packed with lots of beautiful trees, non-native plants, shrubs etc. We also don't want to move out until our self-build plans are granted.

 

The question is, should we go for outline planning permission for a conversion? Would the work of obtaining permission positively benefit the sale or is the agro just not worth it? We'd really like to be sure of hitting at least £400k for it, any more would of course be great.

I am not convinced that planning consent would add much to the sale value and if the prospective buyer does not like the scheme they may feel they are paying extra for something they don't want.

Just now, Mr Punter said:

I am not convinced that planning consent would add much to the sale value and if the prospective buyer does not like the scheme they may feel they are paying extra for something they don't want.

 

Yes, that's a valid point.

We did the same as you, our plot was part of the land belonging to a cottage we had bought and lived in for a year. We originally were going to put two bedrooms and a toilet upstairs and had gone through the process right up to getting the building warrant to do the work. We decided against doing the work as it appeared we weren’t going to recoup the cost of doing the work when we sold. We handed over all the paperwork to our solicitor so that the buyer could do the work if they wanted to but when I spoke to them after the sale was through they weren’t even aware of the plans and their solicitor had never handed it over to them so a total waste of time and money on our part.