Buying next door?

D

davel

Guest
Hi,
I live in a 3 bed semi for the past 6 years but now with an expanding family need more room and I don't want to loose my tracker my selling up at a loss and moving the negative equity (UB mortgage). The house next door was bought at the same time as mine but never occupied, is it possible to get a mortgage to buy next door and then combine the two properties into one for insurance, water tax and house tax etc at a later date.Does anyone have any experience with a situation like this?

thanks for reading

davel
 
Do you have significant savings to use as a deposit for next door? If you're already in negative equity a bank is unlikely to look favourably at you taking on another mortgage.
 
Hi

not really the question I was asking, but yes I do have the savings

cheers
 
Clearly many steps further than you intend to go for now, but you might be interested to see there was a “room to improve” program on RTE a year or so ago about this. http://www.rte.ie/tv/roomtoimprove/s4p7.html

They went all the way, the result was fine, the owners delighted, but it was expensive. I seem to remember most of the builders, architects etc. were against it as a general plan. Their view was one odd expensively converted detached house would be worth less than the two properties it replaced.

If you’re not getting a builder involved initially at least you may be pleased to know that in most Irish semi-ds you can easily communicate with someone next door without raising your voice, so that might come in useful.
 
Hi Dave

Ulster Bank is the only lender which will allow you to keep your tracker while trading up.

They probably won't do this for negative equity, but if you are in deep negative equity, you probably should be focussing on clearing that first, before borrowing more money.

If your savings clear your negative equity, you should have a chat with UB and you may come to a deal with them. A reasonable deal would be to have you to clear your negative equity with your savings and then they will lend you the additional money you need to buy a bigger property at their SVR.

Overall, I think it's a bad idea to combine houses. The new Local Property Tax is based on the value of the property, so two houses will cost roughly twice as much as one. Water may be cheaper, but not if you are metered. The insurance company may even charge you some form of additional premium for combining two houses.

Brendan
 
I think it's a great idea - you get to stay in an area and with neighbours you are happy with and you probably end up with a cheaper cost for size than if you moved - eg combine 2 3-bed 1500 sq ft houses at 250K each and you get 3000 sq ft for 500K - you probably wouldn't be able to find a 6 bed 3000 sq ft house for 500K. I know a guy who did this and they were very happy with the outcome (their kids loved answering one door to random callers, then running through the house to answer the second door to the same people...) - although they kept the houses pretty much the same structurally so they could downsize again if/when necessary (2 front doors still in place, utility room instead of kitchen in one of the houses so the plumbing etc. was still there - they only had one access point inside between the two houses). There might not be a huge saving on your property tax (although I think there would be some - a 6-bed 3000 sq ft house in a regular housing estate probably wouldn't sell for twice the price of 2 singles), but if you are looking to move anyway to a bigger/more expensive house, you would probably end up paying property tax to your house budget anyway.
 
thanks for the helpful responses guys, clearly a lot to think over but as u said orka the area is the key here for us with all amenities close to hand and roots set in the community. Maybe I'll just knock through and start squatting :)
 
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