Possibly starting all over again

[AliG]

Yes that is what we are ideally going try and build, of course it is wasteful of land, but in this case the land only has planning for a small house, despite being a small plot. I am gambling that a larger single storey house is more acceptable in planning terms.

 

@newhome this is exactly what they moved out of, they had a 5 bedroom 2100sq foot house with 3 or 4 rooms they barely every used. The funniest designs I think are where a house has 5 bedrooms upstairs and then a double garage downstairs, so they only have a lounge dining room and kitchen. I cannot imagine what lifestyle these houses suit, not many people have 3+ children.

 

I did play around with designs that might work for them and figured out that one way to build a house with nice public rooms and few bedrooms is to move the lounge upstairs. So you might have a kitchen/dining/family room plus master bedroom the ground floor and lounge bedroom and study upstairs. This way if you stop being able to get upstairs you could comfortably live on the ground floor.

 

At the moment my preferred design is something like a 140sq metre 3 bed bungalow . I have also considered that as it is very close to us, if one day in the fullness of time we decide to downsize we could just move into it and not have to move out of the area which we really like.

 

When we bought our current plot, we could have bought a larger plot for less in a less nice street. Ultimately I decided that if I could afford the nicer street I would just regret not going for it in the long run.

 

What we are finding out now is how nice a street it is. It is a very wide street, with only 20 houses mostly in large gardens. There is little traffic and very few parked cars. Not only is it a nice street, however, but there is a small supermarket, post office, restaurant, coffee shop, GP etc within a 10 minute walk as well as buses into town etc. It is an ideal place for older people to live, we are much younger than most people in the area. Despite living in a city all my life it has actually been very rare that I cold walk to a supermarket, post office etc.It really is very nice. When I said to the lawyer today I though the land was overpriced, she said ah yes, but don't forget what street it is on. 

 

 

[ProDave]

2 minutes ago, AliG said:

 

@newhome this is exactly what they moved out of, they had a 5 bedroom 2100sq foot house with 3 or 4 rooms they barely every used. The funniest designs I think are where a house has 5 bedrooms upstairs and then a double garage downstairs, so they only have a lounge dining room and kitchen. I cannot imagine what lifestyle these houses suit, not many people have 3+ children.

 

 

B&B or guest house.

 

I remember when building our last house and not long after we had moved up here, I met one of the community councilors. When he realised who I was, he said "Ah yours is the house with 5 toilets......"

[AliG]

Now that all planning applications are on line we constantly get questions and comments about the house. My daughter gets asked about it at school, "why do you have 2 kitchens," "oh yours is the house with the pool" etc. I can't complain, I always look at plans to be nosey, but I wouldn't then start questioning the owner about it.

[newhome]

Why do you have 2 kitchens? 

 

I like Edinburgh as cities go. I'm not a city person in general, but there are some lovely leafy areas pretty near to town and then not long after that you are in countryside. I certainly prefer it to London. 

[AliG]

Our offer was accepted, but we will not conclude until we have confirmation that the services to the house next door do not interfere with our ability to build on the site.

[newhome]

Congrats! Does that offers over thing make you feel you’ve bid too much afterwards and may have secured it for less, or are you just pleased to have secured it? I’d prefer more transparency I think. 

[Ferdinand]

On 04/10/2018 at 20:53, AliG said:

The one thing she mentioned was the new nil rate band for property inheritance, TBH I hadn't checked to see if it applied in Scotland. This effectively allows a couple to leave £1m tax free

 

Yes it does apply in Scotland. 

 

 

Edited October 10, 2018 by Ferdinand

[AliG]

I don't think we bid too much, I wasn't going to worry about a few thousand either way tbh.

 

There is £30,000 less stamp duty on the land than there would be on the house built on it which goes a long way to paying for things.

Edited October 10, 2018 by AliG

[the_r_sole]

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Edited September 26, 2019 by the_r_sole

[newhome]

25 minutes ago, AliG said:

There is £30,000 less stamp duty on the land than there would be on the house built on it which goes a long way to paying for things.

 

That’s a good way of looking at it and you can’t really put a value on getting exactly what you want by building it yourself. 

[newhome]

15 minutes ago, the_r_sole said:

where is the land if you don't mind me asking? what kind of money you looking at for a plot in edinburgh? anything I saw advertised there was absolutely crazy

 

It will be quite a lot. Any building plot in Edinburgh would be well above 300k I imagine, many over 400k. 

[Cpd]

Sometimes what something is worth to you personally is more important than what it’s “actually worth” I know I would have paid twice as much as I did or more if I could have afforded it as the location for me personally was everything I could have ever wanted. Some say I got a bargain others say I overpaid and should ov could ov got it for less. But I truely don’t care,  they asked for an offer, I looked at what I could afford and told them that was it, cash ready to go into their account. They were happy. I was happy. Game on.  

[lizzie]

Ditto we paid what he said he wanted for it didnt try to haggle because for us it was spot on for our needs.

[AliG]

It was around £350k for 0.2 of an acre (800sq metres)

 

As suggested there are a few plots for sale in Edinburgh at around £450k that are a little bit larger. There is also a plot I know of that just came on the market for offers over £150k but it is quite small and hemmed in by the adjacent houses although in a nice area. My parents don't want a large garden to look after anyway.

 

As has been said though you have to see the value to you.

 

The plot is at the other end of the street to us, around 5 minutes walk away. It is one of the nicest streets in Edinburgh and also within 2 minutes of a bus stop, 5 minutes of a few shops and 10 minutes walk of a GP. Perfect for retired people, the average age in the area is over 50 I believe.

 

It is exactly what my parents would like and if they enjoy it and everyone is happy then I don't really care about a few thousand pounds either way. Of course the value of money is different to everyone.

 

The wrinkle is that the plot only had permission for quite a small house, around 110square metres. That might be worth around £450-500k so wouldn't justify what we paid. In extremis we could fall back to building this.

 

But the plot is easily big enough to take something much bigger.

 

We plan to apply for a single storey house of around 160sq metres including a single garage

 

At a guess it would be worth around £650k and so we can spend around £300k building it, 2000 a square metre and come out even.

 

The plot is part of the garden of a listed house, the council told me that they didn't want a house with a larger footprint when I called and asked, but the application for the existing planning was on half the plot, I believe the owner hoped he could then apply for another house. The council also allowed a much much larger house to be built in the same situation at the other side of the street and have just approved for another garden in the street to be split in two. Plus most objections were to overlooking from a two storey house and this house would basically not be seen.

 

We made a condition of the offer that we need to know if there are services through the plot to the house next door that would interfere with what we want to build, so are awaiting confirmation of that before the architect goes to work.

 

 

[newhome]

5 minutes ago, AliG said:

The plot is part of the garden of a listed house, the council told me that they didn't want a house with a larger footprint when I called and asked, but the application for the existing planning was on half the plot, I believe the owner hoped he could then apply for another house. 

 

Is it still an option to split the plot if the council won't yield and you can only build on half the plot? If not while your parents are living there but later if you decide to sell? I guess you have PD rights once the house is built anyway to make it a bit larger albeit not substantially so. 

 

 

 

[AliG]

Sadly it is a conservation area so no PD. It feels like almost the whole city is a conservation area.

[the_r_sole]

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Edited September 26, 2019 by the_r_sole

[AliG]

I have actually found them surprisingly helpful recently. I feel like there has been some kind of change. Many time I have called recently and they have answered the phone, something which never used to happen.

[AliG]

Looks like it should be OK.

 

Because of the services and allowing for the house to be roughly 2m from the boundaries and 9m from the boundary with the house behind it has to fit in a space roughly 17.5m wide by 14.5m deep.

 

We will apply for something covering 155sq metres which is 20% of the area of the plot.

 

[ProDave]

Are you missing a trick here?  A plot that big in the city would surely support more than 1 house?  Or are you planning a phase 2 later on to the right of the house you propose?  (what is the significance of the "1" in the house outline?)

[AliG]

15 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Are you missing a trick here?  A plot that big in the city would surely support more than 1 house?  Or are you planning a phase 2 later on to the right of the house you propose?  (what is the significance of the "1" in the house outline?)

 

It's just number 1 in the street.

 

Just to clarify the plot we are buying is the small one with the lines through it, the rest of the area os the garden of number 1.

 

Number 1 is listed. It was up for sale in 2015 I think. It had a stair lift, old kitchen etc, so presumably was lived in by an old person who had not upgraded it.

 

A local developer bought it, did it up then sold it but kept back around 25% of the garden.

 

They initially applied for permission for a larger two storey modern house with double garage, it was withdrawn.

 

They applied for permission in half the plot we have bought for a small 2 storey house, there was a mysterious area listed as garden ground owned by the applicant but not part of the house plot. I think that then once it was up trying to creep along the road and build another house was exactly their plan.

 

They then applied to enlarge the house they had permission for but it was withdrawn.

 

I did ask have a quick call with the council and the person I spoke to said that they didn't want any more of the area built over, even for a single storey house. The reason seems to be that it encroaches too much on number 1 that is listed.

 

I have taken a flyer that is nonsense. The house on the opposite corner is also listed. A house has been built in its garden that covers around 250 square metres of ground and is two storeys tall. It covers a larger area of than the listed house. Considering this precedent it would be difficult to refuse what we are proposing. I think keeping it single storey so that you cannot see it, the hedges around the site are over 3m tall, gives it the best chance of being approved.

 

This is the kind of house that my parents would like, whilst something else might maximise the value of the plot it would be hard to get permission. Even with what we are asking for I have a couple of backup plans.

 

There were a lot of objections to the two storey houses applied for due to overlooking and the effect on the streetscape, I think one storey will be a lot less annoying to people in the area.

 

 

Edited October 12, 2018 by AliG

[AliG]

Got preliminary floor plans from the architect if anyone wants to comment.

 

The changes I have already suggested are -

1. Door into garage

2. Window in lounge opposite the entrance door.

3. The WC is larger than many bathrooms, our reading of the Scottish building regs is that there needs to be provision for a public bath/shower room, so we have left space for one. But it is 2.6m across excluding the bulkhead which seems too much. I would shave off 2-300mm from the and the kitchen due to the limitations of the amount of site coverage we can have. Maybe we start with this and have that in our back pocket.

4. Some kind of covering outside the front door.

 

The bottom of this is South.

 

[ProDave]

Scottish BR say you must have space to fit a 900 by 900 shower plus it's activity space You might as well fit the shower rather than just leave the space (and install the drain for it) .  You need to model the room with all the activity spaces.  The door will probably have to hing outwards.

 

My gut feeling is making both bedrooms en-suite is an extravagance in such a small house. Make the middle bedroom just a bedroom and the back one a bigger bedroom with en-suite by ditching those cupboards.

[AliG]

The 2 en suites was my idea, as my parents occasionally have people stay I just think it is nice that they don't have to come out into the hall to use the bathroom in they don't have to. It is extravagant, but the idea is to have a small house with the feel of a large house, I kind of thought of taking what they build as luxury flats for downsizes and making that a house.

 

I think the architect has allowed for the activity space in the WC, but we have discussed would we just put a shower or a bath in there. I think the regs are stupid in that a shower or bath off a bedroom on the ground floor doesn't count as accessible, it has to be open to the public as it were.

 

We could make some of the WC a cupboard and have a drain in there with a partition that could be taken down.

[ProDave]

How about make one of the en-suites a Jack and Jill also opening to a circulation space. I believe that would then obviate the need for a public shower, so the toilet could be smaller (but check that with BC first)

 

The space saving idea we have is the downstairs WC is in the utility room. Not to everyones taste, but BC are happy with it as long as it has disabled access and there is room for a shower to be added later (if we did that we would divide it into 2 rooms)