My boyfriend and I live in our first house together, as first time buyers we had hoped to sell the house for a small profit once we moved and try to work our way up property ladder slightly. We have a large stone outbuilding behind our house, and are unsure what to do with it. We plan to get the house valuated after we’ve finish current work, and enquire as to what wold be most beneficial to the houses value to do with it, but for now I just wanted to get some opinions on it.
The outbuilding is 21 ft x 8ft. Solid stone, and with it’s own chimney. At the moment it is just stone with a concrete floor - no walls etc.
Our house is a 1 bedroom cottage, and has a long galley kitchen, there isn’t enough room for a single fridge, single freezer and washing machine (unless you have a fridge freezer). So we currently have our freezer in the outbuilding. We planning to turn it into a utility type room, where we had the washing machine, maybe a sink and some work surfaces for laundry/storage purposes. But weren’t sure how much this would appeal to a buyer. Many people have said to apply for planning permission to extend the house onto the outbuilding, but we only have a small courtyard and shared area of garden, so all of owned garden space would be taken if we did this. Surely less outside space would be unappealing? We also thought about knocking it down entirely and having a larger garden area, but were unsure whether it would be best to put it to some use.
I was just wondering what you would do with it (ie. utility room, knock it down, extend), and what you would see as appealing if you saw one with a house?
Many thanks.
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I love your question(s) ! I have so many thoughts for you. Because your main home is a small cottage I would down size all appliances that you can. Minor inconvenience, but this is for a short time if when you anticipate a sale. If you start adding appliances to the outbuilding potential buyers may automatically think you do not have enough space in the cottage and see this as their potential problem. Red Flag, if it is to small for you it may be too small for them. Go the minimalists side! Onto the Stone House: I would play up the Great opportunity with the oddly sized Stone House to the benefit of ever trendy Outside Entertaining. Adding a patio sitting area with many natural elements of plants, garden and herbs before entering the doorway of the stone house to help incoperate the visual idea of an easy flow ‘outside to the inside’ and vise versa to create the visual idea of additonal space of the open floor plan. Stage it up as a Sitting area for warm nights, possible Arts Studio, work shop. Endless potential and potential to generate additonal monies at sale time. Most importantly without investing excessive amounts of monies into the property that you will eventually sell. Good Luck to you both!