Converting Residential into Commercial Property

Nova Financial Ltd featured in Property Question Time on the Property Sky Channel 198

Our Managing Director Paul Mahoney on the Expert Panel:

Bonnie Bilson: My next question is going to go to you Paul. And it says, "I've seen that there's hardly any small commercial properties available in my area, especially offices. It makes me think that buying a large old house as an investment and renting it out as serviced offices, might be a good idea." Any thoughts on this?

Paul Mahoney: It could be a good idea in the right circumstances. I'd be very wary of that 'cause it's definitely against the current trend. Pretty well all accountants are encouraging people to do the opposite. There's a major shortage of residential property pretty well UK wide at the moment, so to take a large residential home and convert that back to office space or commercial space seems against that trend. But if there's a lack of supply in the area and a strong demand, it could certainly work. But I'd do thorough due diligence before going into that.

There are obviously other options. You could take a large home and turn it into a HMO or split it into multiple residential apartments. In the right circumstance, the yields are slightly higher on commercial property, but the vacancy rates are also much higher. Other things to consider would be the finance that would be associated with that type of property. The cost of that finance, the terms, how that works out so far as your net returns go. So there's a broad range of things to consider and it's hard for me to comment without knowing where it is and what is. But that's some of the things to take into account.

Bonnie Bilson: Thank you, do you think you would get planning for something like this turning an old house into offices.

Paul Mahoney: I'd be surprised to be honest. As I say accountants are encouraging the opposite, so that there's permitted development rights at the moment, which encourages developers to turn office space into residential to plug the gap in the housing supply at the moment, so that's obviously something you'd need to check as well.