Buying loft from southwark council

[mcnipper]

Hello EDF

My first post of hopefully many, but I've just moved to the area (and love it) and I was wondering if anyone has bought their loft from Southwark council with a view to doing a loft conversion? If so, can you give me an idea of how much the council wanted for it? Its a 2 bed Victorian pretty standard terrace flat.

Thanks!

Mcnipper

[PeckhamRose]

Can't help you there but welcome and welcome some more to this little forum! And this area!

[grace3]

How can you 'buy a loft'? deeds are from the ground up.

[Salsaboy]

It may not be demised in the lease.

[womanofdulwich]

The value if the loft should be calculated by looking at what it will add to your house when developed ,less costs and a profit margin to reflect risk.

[Jeremy]

mcnipper - sorry not sure how to go about buying the loft from the council! But if your flat doesn't have a garden, think carefully about whether you'd get your money back when you come to sell again.

[womanofdulwich]

thats very true.

[AbDabs]

Also, check out the feasibility of actually doing the loft conversion; you may find that it's not possible with only access at the front (assuming that the ground floor flat has the rear garden). Is your downstairs neighbour 100% behind the scheme?

[James Barber]

I've been supporting a leaseholder in Walworth doing this. Please email me and let me see if I can help.

[Huggers]

my neighbour did this- the council owned the original freehold and so therefore owned the loft. They bought it for about 30k and converted it into open plan living quarters leaving their bedrooms on the first floor.

[mcnipper]

Thanks for the replies - I really hope that it's not ?30k to buy it, that seems outrageous and I don't think that reflects the uplift in value. Back of the fag packet but ?30k to freeholder + ?40k(ish) to convert it - the uplift in value won't be ?70k+ I wouldn't have thought! A colleague bought their loft from the freeholder in Queens Park and they paid ?5k!!

[Jeremy]

I would be surprised if the freehold itself was worth a lot over 10K. So charging any more than that just to add the loft onto one of the lease agreements sounds a bit cheeky.

[Honoroaky]

We are just starting this process and also hoping that it won't cost ?30k! Considering it's not worth anything to anyone else it seems a bit much.

We had the inspection man from the council around last week and his comment was along the lines of it not being possible as the council would need to access the shared water tank in our loft, which is a bit ridiculous as they have to do that at the moment anyway (and we would be making it accessible so that it could be maintained - as it's not been looked at in 5 years). I'm not feeling hopeful and with house prices as they are, moving isn't an option!

[Honoroaky]

How are others getting on with this? We finally heard back from the council today and it's a big fat 'no' with no way to challenge or negotiate apparently... I'm wondering how many people have managed to get through the process.

[ratty]

Mcnipper, is it on crystal palace road and did you buy it off a guy from Dublin and a girl from prestwick?

If the answer is yes, then they looked into it and found it prohibitively expensive as I recall.

[MrBen]

It might be easier just to enfranchise yourself and buy the freehold first- especially if downstairs is private leasehold also. Then you can do what you want within planning laws. Rough guide suggests freehold on a two story victorian property is approx 8-20K if in SE22 postcode. A good lawyer with experience in that space could help.

[peterpepper]

I'm on Beauval Road and I bought my loft 6 months back and it cost me ?8k

[Honoroaky]

Mr ben, our downstairs neighbour is a council tenant so no way to buy freehold Unfortunately.

Peterpepper - can I ask whether you had any issues around water tanks and also roughly how long the process took please?

[peterpepper]

There were no water tanks in the loft that were being used, there were just empty redundant ones. The whole process took 6-8 weeks if I remember correctly.

[Honoroaky]

So our saga continues! The council maintenance team agreed that the water tanks in our loft were redundant and difficult to maintain and we agreed to pay half the estimated bill of over ?1000 to have them removed. It took just over 4 hours to do this yesterday. Expensive but a means to an end to then be able to purchase the loft space.

As soon as the workmen left we had an email from Southwark saying that they have changed their policy and due to estate management system difficulties (even though we are a street property), they have decided not to sell any more loft spaces! Unbelievable when we had been led to believe that this was the way through.

Is anyone else attempting this at the moment or managed it recently? The team dealing with it claim they haven't sold a loft space for ages and ages.

[Robert Poste's Child]

I think you should refer this to James Barber given the expense that you have gone to already.

[loud8074]

Hi there,

First we'd like to thank you all for sharing your personal experience. We've find it very useful to consider how it could turn out when starting this loft purchase process.

We are basically currently buying a flat in the borough of Southwark, in part because it has this very nice loft which we are really hoping to buy and convert. Obv we know it's not an easy thing and that it would take long time to gather the cash if the council is asking for a considerable amount.

Honoroaky, your point is very worrying. Have you heard back about this fact that the council is not selling anymore lofts?? It sounds like you have had a nightmare.

We may have the same problem you have regarding the water tank. I went there and checked it the other day. It's old, open, moldy inside, one pipe is not even connected anymore but there is still some piping from underneath it which is going through to the bathroom in the flat. In this bathroom there is actually another big and more recent water tank.

We're now getting in touch with James Barber to ask his advice and the neighbor from downstairs to check if potentially, he could be interested in buying the freehold with us. We'll keep feeding this post then but it would be great to hear if you have any updates Honoroaky.

[egoode]

You could do what the previous owner of my flat did which was convert the loft without any permissions and deal with the legal paperwork afterwards. However my purchase of the flat took over 17 months trying to sort it all out in the end so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it if you need to sell in the next couple of years.

[Demi9]

Hi ya,

Thank you for all your feedback, great information to consider, I'm currently trying to start the process but after 4 emails and speaking with someone I still haven't got anywhere. I will try again tomorrow.

I will say when I spoke with the lady from Southwark she didn't mention anything about the council not selling anymore loft space, the only issue was the water tank which they need to come and check.

Good luck those trying.

[ted17]

Anyone got any updates on experiences of buying a loft from the Council in the last year or so? Thinking about this and trying to work out if it will be easier to buy the freehold and do it that way, rather than extending the lease to include the loft (which it doesn't, currently). Thanks.