Buying the house next door?

[Brinyan]

We have no mortgage, having cleared it last year. The house next door is likely to be put on the market shortly, probably for about £350/370k.
Wondering about trying to make a move on it & would be able to put a deposit of £100/120k down & buy to let mortgage for the remainder.
It’s appealing as there’s a very good car port that I could use, still leaving parking for the house.
I’ve thought about buy to let previously, hearing both positive & negative.
Maintenance wouldn’t be an issue - I’m on Gas Safe Register etc myself & that’s how I make my living, plumbing, heating, refurbs etc.
Just wonder if it may be a missed opportunity if I don’t attempt to do it.
I haven’t looked at mortgage possibilities yet, but imagine that with a deposit of approximately a third of the value, hopefully shouldn’t be an issue.
Any thoughts appreciated. Thanks

[Panamax]

£350k sounds a lot of money to pay for a car port. Have you factored in the "transaction costs" of buying, and later selling, a BTL? They can be pretty ferocious in themselves.

Why not just move to a better house? Or just make the neighbour an offer to buy additional space for parking? From what you say it shouldn't decrease the value of their house so they should come out ahead.

But you're right - this is the time to think about. No point having regrets after it's been sold to someone else.

[2gins]

What's the EPC look like?

[ConnectionError]

Would you want to live next door to a property you are letting?

What if the tenant is a tenant from hell, and stops paying rent etc...

[BoRED S2upid]

ConnectionError said:

Would you want to live next door to a property you are letting?

What if the tenant is a tenant from hell, and stops paying rent etc...

This. It can only be a PITA. You won’t be able to resist becoming the landlord from hell.

[Brinyan]

Unsure on EPC, was built in the 90’s, so can be improved upon, I’m sure.
I don’t see it as 350k for a carport. I just see the carport as something I could make use of.
We’re not attached to the house, but I realise not all tenants are necessarily good tenants.
Just see it as worth considering.

[BoRED S2upid]

Not sure you can use their carport when renting a house. I’m sure I was told this when I wanted to store something in a garage of a BTL. It’s not your garage it’s the tenants. Would you have to go onto their property to use the carport? You can’t just wander onto their land when you wish there are rules.

[Nurburgsingh]

Is there scope to modify and sell on, after you’ve redrawn some boundary’s and taken the car port into your own property?

People behind me did this… bought next door, modernised the house, reallocated half the garden for themselves ( made theirs L shaped ) and then sold it on.

[NuckyThompson]

Brinyan said:

Unsure on EPC, was built in the 90’s, so can be improved upon, I’m sure.
I don’t see it as 350k for a carport. I just see the carport as something I could make use of.
We’re not attached to the house, but I realise not all tenants are necessarily good tenants.
Just see it as worth considering.

At 350k I’d hazard a guess the type of tenants you’d get would be working professionals. So less likely to be nightmare tenants particularly knowing their landlord is next door so would have an inkling if they’re trading the place.

Depends on your age too though and whether you’re seeing the house as a pension of sorts. Factor in stamp duty and other costs and it may be worth seeing if that £100-150k would do better in a long term investment fund

[Largechris]

Blimey less than an hour and you’ve already had replies on most of the intelligent points I was going to make.
The only thing I would add is that it would make more sense if you were going to do a full renovation / redecoration etc. yourself as you would be on site, and if you tarted up the outside maybe it adds value to your own home.

But your original premise, buying it so you can takeover the carport, sounds mad frankly.

[Brinyan]

The carport is remote from my neighbour’s property & actually right next to a gate from my back garden.
There could be scope for buying, modernising & selling on, after transferring the car port & a bit more ground to my ownership.
Thanks for your comments.

[PurpleTurtle]

BoRED S2upid said:

ConnectionError said:

Would you want to live next door to a property you are letting?

What if the tenant is a tenant from hell, and stops paying rent etc...

This. It can only be a PITA. You won’t be able to resist becoming the landlord from hell.

My colleague who is a successful long-term BTL landlord:

"The only advice I would ever give anyone getting into it is to never meet your tenants unless you absolutely have to!"

He's a 'good' landlord - good quality properties, nice areas, he looks after them well, anything needs fixing, he has 'a man' attend to it right away.

Even so, there is always some nightmare tenant story to tell.

[Sir Bagalot]

We've done this.

We're quite happy where we live. We extended in the past and it was the family home.

So why did we buy next door?

Simple. We didn't want to move, neither did we want an investor buying next door (adjoined). If we owned it then we could dictate who lived there.

We leave our tenants alone and they merrily live their own lives. Any sign of anti-social behaviour and it's S21 time.

So far it's worked.

Do we regret it? If I could have a guarantee of having nice neighbours, or ones that keep themselves to themselves, then no, we wouldn't have bought. Problem is there are too many LL's about who don't care.

Deposit of 25% is usually good

Edited by Sir Bagalot on Monday 10th January 21:42

[NRS]

BoRED S2upid said:

ConnectionError said:

Would you want to live next door to a property you are letting?

What if the tenant is a tenant from hell, and stops paying rent etc...

This. It can only be a PITA. You won’t be able to resist becoming the landlord from hell.

Not the case for everyone. When I was renting before it was the bottom part of the house with the main landlord upstairs. They were fantastic - for example they'd always send a text message before asking if it was ok to come, and not just turn up ringing the bell. We'd help each other clear the snow and so on.

[ConnectionError]

NRS said:

BoRED S2upid said:

ConnectionError said:

Would you want to live next door to a property you are letting?

What if the tenant is a tenant from hell, and stops paying rent etc...

This. It can only be a PITA. You won’t be able to resist becoming the landlord from hell.

Not the case for everyone. When I was renting before it was the bottom part of the house with the main landlord upstairs. They were fantastic - for example they'd always send a text message before asking if it was ok to come, and not just turn up ringing the bell. We'd help each other clear the snow and so on.

There are always exceptions to every situation. 95% of people are great, it is the 5% that ruin it for everyone else.

[anonymous-user]

Poor tenants are in the minority, despite lots of non-landlord opinions.

However, good tenants often have quite unrealistic expectations and I wouldn't want them being able to pop next door whenever they fancied to ask to fix/install/change something but that's a personal thing - ymmv.

[DonkeyApple]

I would think the first question to answer is what the net yield would be. There's going to be ballache involved but whether that's actually an issue is ultimately going to depend on whether you're banking enough every month.

[Tresco]

I get the next door thing but with your plumbing/building skills wouldn't you be better off buying something you can add value to?

[LooneyTunes]

Badda said:

Poor tenants are in the minority, despite lots of non-landlord opinions.

However, good tenants often have quite unrealistic expectations and I wouldn't want them being able to pop next door whenever they fancied to ask to fix/install/change something but that's a personal thing - ymmv.

This. We have a few rental properties and have deliberately not bought any closer than a several miles away as we just don't think you can win having a rental right next door.

There's a practical reality that people renting are paying for a service, but their level of what reasonable service looks like can vary (even if it turns out they caused whatever problem needs fixing). It's compounded by the fact that the rent is often the biggest monthly bill and a big percentage of take home, so they (rightly) have an expectation that things will get sorted however you'll get the odd one who won't accept, for example, that a plumber isn't always available in a matter of minutes, or needs to order in parts, in spite of the fact that they're still getting it fixed/replaced much faster than most people would be able to manage for their own property. Can imagine it'd be even worse if they know you're in the trade!

Even if they are good and reasonable (which most are), still wouldn't want them knowing our business locally or find ourselves bumping into them in the pub, etc.

It'd be different if it were self-managed furnished holiday lets as for those I do think you need to be more available.

[Mr Overheads]

With your skill set it sounds ideal, to do as suggested above.. Buy it, carve some land/car port into your own boundary. Do up the house and flip it. Or AirBNB depending if you're in an area with demand for that. Wouldn't want to live next door to my tenants.

Or if house is better, do it up, move in then do up your current home and sell it, plus carve out land in opposite direction.