The format of television property shows is always the same: starry-eyed couple buy home and refurbish it, or, if they are feeling really bullish, pull it down and replace it with a glass and concrete box. It all looks dreadfully hard work, though, and can lead to alarming delays, cost overruns and, if they are really unlucky, a divorce.
So is there a better way to play the development game? Frank Lampard certainly thinks so. The Chelsea and England footballer has secured planning permission for an extra house in the garden of his Surrey home and is leaving the tough bit — doing the building work — to someone else.
Lampard bought the house with his former fiancée, Elen Rivas, for £4m in 2003. He moved out after they broke up three years ago, but is now trying to sell it for £7m. The price hike is largely down to inclusion of permission to build the new home, which could be sold for as much as £4m when finished.
Can you really make a fat profit just by filling in a few forms and sending some plans to your local council? Securing planning permission is certainly cheap compared with carrying out building works — Elmbridge district council, which covers the area around Lampard’s property in Blackhills, charges just £335 to consider an application for a new dwelling.
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This can be a drawn-out process (Lampard first submitted his application in April 2007) and is likely to ruffle the neighbours’ feathers.
It remains to be seen whether Lampard will achieve the £7m he is asking, especially because his target market is effectively limited to property developers, but he is following an increasingly well-trodden path.
Take Holly Tree House, a four-bedroom house with a two-bedroom cottage in Clanfield, Oxfordshire. It sits in a 1.4-acre garden — room enough, the planners decided, for an extra six-bedroom home.
Huw Warren, of Savills, the estate agency marketing the property, estimates that the new plot is worth about £400,000.Building on it will knock about £100,000 off the value of the existing house, but that’s a net gain for the owners of £300,000. The property is for sale for £1.15m (01865 339704, savills.com).
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“If you have a house in a big garden, you should explore the idea of getting permission for an extra house,” Warren says. “There’s nothing more upsetting than watching someone else making the money later.”
Even if you are not planning to sell in the near future, it may be worth investigating the possibilities now, then reapplying to keep the planning permission, which typically runs for three years, “live”, just as Lampard has done.
This tactic looks likely to pay off for the owners of 224 London Road, a six-bedroom villa in Charlton Kings, Cheltenham. Nine years ago, they applied for planning permission to create a three-bedroom chalet-style home at the bottom of their 250ft garden. It is just as well they did: two years ago, Cheltenham council changed its policy on “garden-grabbing” developments.
“They wouldn’t get consent now,” says David Evans, of Savills (01242 548000, savills.com). He is selling the property for £825,000 — £100,000 of which, he reckons, is due to the planning permission.
You don’t need a large garden with room for an extra house to cash in on potential development value. It can be enough merely to get permission to extend. Simon Rose, of Strutt & Parker estate agency, cites a four-storey townhouse on the Fulham Road, west London. He is selling it for £2.75m — 10% of which, he believes, is down to permission obtained by the owner to dig a basement that would increase the floor space from 2,332 sq ft to 3,383 sq ft (020 7373 1010, struttandparker.com).
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“The beauty of such houses is that a developer can move in and get on with the project,” he says. “It can take a long time to get permission — time when a developer has money tied up.”
There is a potential snag. If you market a property with plans for a vast basement, you could put off buyers who feel they are being asked to pay for something they don’t want. Unless you dream of appearing on telly with Kevin McCloud, £275,000 is an awful lot to pay for a set of pretty drawings of an imaginary basement.