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There are no legal restrictions when it comes to selling a house with lapsed planning permission however there are some further considerations. Planning permission at a house or flat can often make it appear more valuable to prospective buyers, but it can lapse if no construction starts after a few years. If that’s your current situation, you may be wondering this lapsed planning permission will affect the sale of your home, and this guide provides answers as well as tips on getting a buyer to make a fair and swift offer.
- What does it mean to have a property with lapsed planning?
- Reasons why sellers may not have acted on planning permission
- How lapsed planning permission can affect the sale of your house or flat
- Reapplying for lapsed planning permission before selling your home
- Your options to find a buyer for your property with lapsed planning
- Selling a home with lapsed planning: top questions and answers
What does it mean to have a property with lapsed planning?
Planning permission is approval that local authorities grant to homeowners before they can make any significant physical changes to a freehold or leasehold property.
Each local authority has its own regulations and requirements in place for planning permission, including important issues such as when approval for construction work expires.
The Planning Portal, launched in 2002, is a website that homeowners in England and Wales can use to determine whether or not they need to apply for planning permission for construction work that they intend to purse at their properties. If your home is in Scotland or Northern Ireland, other similar resources are available.
If you have previously obtained planning permission, it’s not an indefinite approval that you can act on at any time in the future. Local authorities set specific deadlines for when planning permission expires, or lapses, and this is usually within two to three years after it was issued.
Many buyers will look more favourably on a house or flat that already has planning permission, because it will ease their ability to build an extension or other construction they want to do at your property.
But should you be the owner of a property with lapsed planning permission, it could create either benefits or problems with trying to generate interest from prospective buyers.
As this guide explains, these same buyers might still see the fact that you once had planning permission at your home as an advantage because it could imply that it will be easier for them to get the same approval from the local authority in the future. But other buyers may be worried that your situation might make it harder for them when reapplying for planning permission.
Reasons why sellers may not have acted on planning permission
Planning permission usually expires no later than three years after the local authority approves it, as noted by the estate agency Equus.
There are many homeowners throughout the UK that have gone through the lengthy and expensive process of obtaining planning permission from their local authority for a construction project they wanted to pursue at their property, but they never ended up building it. Should they wait too long then their planning permission could expire, or lapse, depending on whatever deadline the local authority has set for when the approval is deemed no longer valid.
If this is your situation at your property, there are a number of reasons that can explain why you might have ended up with lapsed planning permission and not started any construction.
Perhaps you have some development land at your property on which you intended to use for building an extension, but you were unable to start the work due to financial issues, time constraints or other reasons. Eventually the deadline to build will have passed, and the approval is now lapsed.
Or you might have changed your mind about the construction work that you had in mind for your house or flat and no longer needed to use the planning permission and so it expired.
Other homeowners may have a change in their family situation – anything from a divorce through to getting a new job that requires moving to another country – that means whatever building they intended for their current property is no longer something they can do.
How lapsed planning permission can affect the sale of your house or flat
If your property had planning permission but it has since lapsed, don’t worry that this will be a major negative factor in the eyes of prospective buyers. Even though the approval is no longer in place for future construction work, it could still likely help you with selling your home.
Often, the fact that you once had planning permission at your property could make it seem more valuable to buyers. That’s because this type of approval is usually seen as enhancing the perceived value of any type of home, as Maack Architects explains on its website.
Someone who is interested in making an offer on your home and building an extension or pursuing other construction work will see that you once had planning permission, and they may believe this signals that getting a similar approval in the future will not be difficult. Given that planning permission is often a complicated, costly and lengthy process, buyers might welcome the possible ease at getting the local authority to reissue the approval.
But note that there are other buyers with similar construction plans for your home could view the lapsed planning permission as a potential concern – particularly if the local authority has changed its planning permission rules or set new limits on building in your area since the time that the original approval was issued whilst you were the homeowner.
If this type of buyer’s main goal with your property is some time of construction that will require planning permission, they may think that trying to reobtain the approval from the local authority will be too stressful and unpredictable, and therefore lose interest in your home.
Reapplying for lapsed planning permission before selling your home
If your property previously had planning permission but it has since expired, one step you may be considering before selling is attempting to reapply for it via your local authority.
Getting planning permission secured again ahead of selling would eliminate the issue of lapsed approval entirely and could help with simplifying your attempt to find a buyer for the home.
There’s always the risk if you reapply for planning permission that you might be denied. Approval is not automatic, as the local authority has the right to reject your new application, as the Federation of Master Builders notes. If this happens, it could further complicate the sale of your home because buyers might now be concerned about the denial.
You’ll also need to consider the expenses involved, because applying for planning permission will cost at least £258 for a single dwelling house or flat, but larger properties can cost much more. If you want to keep your expenses low when selling, this might not be a wise move.
Just because your property has lapsed planning permission does not mean you’ll never be able to find a buyer for it, because there are options for attracting a speedy and fair offer.
One approach is getting in touch with a no-fee quick home buying company like LDN Properties. These businesses make speedy and competitive offers to purchase almost any house or flat, including those with lapsed planning, and it should only take a few weeks before exchange of contracts and receiving the full sale proceeds, because quick buyers don’t charge fees.
Your options to find a buyer for your property with lapsed planning
When you are ready to proceed with selling your home that has lapsed planning, the next step is deciding how to secure a buyer. The four usual methods are selling to a quick home buyer, selling via an estate agent, selling at a property auction, or selling without any help.
You will find that there are distinct pros and cons associated with these various approaches for selling a property. Quick buyers, for example, have that name because they have the advantage of usually completing the process of purchasing a home within a few short weeks. But estate agents and auctioneers charge commission, which will increase your total expenses.
Deciding which selling method to use doesn’t have to be a difficult choice. You can simplify it by reading the details of the four options below and then comparing them against your priorities with the sale of your home, including your goal selling price, whether you are open to paying commission to sell, and how long you are prepared to wait before finding a buyer. This simple task should help you to find out which of the approaches best pairs to your situation.
Selling to a quick home buyer
Quick buyers, like LDN Properties, have the funds available upfront to purchase many types of leasehold or freehold home – including those with lapsed planning permission.
This financial advantage means that they can typically complete the entire process of buying a property in just a handful of weeks, and that covers the time taken to exchange contracts and pay the seller the full proceeds. This speedy schedule is often many weeks and even months faster than trying to sell your home at an auction, on your own, or with an estate agent.
Another perk of selling to an honest zero-fee quick buyer is that you will not be asked to pay them any commission, which is a great way to keep your costs low when selling, particularly when compared to the fees that you would have to pay an estate agent or auctioneer. Those charges will add to your total selling costs because they’re deducted from the final proceeds.
A major reason that so many homeowners use quick buyers when selling is that these companies are well known for making competitive and fast offers to purchase all types of properties regardless of their age, condition, location, shape, size, type, or any other issues.
Beyond buying homes that have lapsed planning permission, LDN Properties’ long list of purchases and offers made throughout the UK since launching in 2003 includes properties sold without a lawyer, flats without an External Wall Fire Review form, houses of multiple occupancy, properties sold without the consent of a husband or wife, flats on a noisy road, homes with survey problems, listed properties, concrete construction houses, flats with high radon levels and a wide range of other scenarios.
Selling your home to a quick buyer is simple, and it starts by calling them – within the first hour of talking with a representative you should get a free price quote for your property. There’s no pressure to immediately decide whether to accept, as you’ll have at least a week to consider it.
If you agree to the initial offer, the company will then send one of their team members to your property so that they can inspect the interior and exterior before the quick buyer makes a final offer. This is the only such viewing that you’ll have, compared to selling through an estate agent or even an auctioneer where you might need to agree to dozens of buyers’ viewings.
Should you accept the final offer, the quick buyer will then move swiftly to complete all of the necessary legal documents for the purchase of your house or flat. Because the entire timeline is typically only a handful of weeks, this is often the most rapid way to sell any property.
Selling via an estate agent
Another way to sell your home with lapsed planning is using an estate agent, and this will mean minimal stress for you because they will take care of most of the important steps.
The work starts with preparing a listing that describes your property and includes photographs of the inside and outside, and then advertising this in their office, online and in local newspapers. Estate agents then organise viewings to give tours of your home to anyone that expresses an interest in it, and they will hear any offers from serious buyers.
For putting in all this effort, an estate agent will charge you commission if they’re able to sell your home, and this will cause your costs to rise as the fee will be subtracted immediately from the final sale proceeds. The usual range for this commission is between 1.15 percent and 1.40 percent of a home’s sale price, but it may be higher or lower than this with some companies.
You can expect the timeline for selling this way to be many months at least, and possibly even more than an entire year, so it’s not the best choice for homeowners who want to sell in a hurry. And even if you get a genuine offer, the buyer could then rescind it and cause the sale to collapse, and if contracts haven’t been exchanged then they won’t face any penalties. You’d have to start over with seeking a buyer, which would delay a final sale even further.
Also beware that some estate agents might quote a high price for selling your home, even if they secretly know that it will only attract offers at a lower value. They do this to encourage you to sell using their services, so that they can charge commission if they find a buyer.
To avoid this situation, you should visit property sales websites like Rightmove or Zoopla and note the present and past sale prices of homes like yours with lapsed planning permission. Then ask multiple estate agents for free sale price quotes, and then calculate the average of all these values for a more accurate estimate of your property’s potential selling price.
Selling at a property auction
Auctions can take a very long time to sell your home, with several long waiting periods, including many weeks or more between when you choose this method of selling and when the auction takes place. If your property sells, the auctioneer then gives the buyer about 28 days to complete all the necessary tasks to finalise the purchase, like signing legal documents.
And they can also prove to be quite expensive, because the average auctioneer will charge you 2.5 percent commission of your home’s final auction sale price. This will be subtracted immediately from the sale proceeds, which will add to your overall selling expenses.
You’ll pay the auctioneer this fee to compensate them for their extensive work in selling your property. This includes preparing and advertising a listing for the house or flat, hosting the auction and overseeing the successful sale of your home to the winning top bidder.
With an auction, you will be asked to select the lowest price at which you’re comfortable selling your property – this is known as the reserve price. Ensure that you choose a price which should result in at least some profit from the sale after you have paid the auctioneer their fees, otherwise you run the risk of only breaking even or, even worse, selling at a loss.
Negotiating with an auctioneer can be one way to address some of the drawbacks of this method of selling. You could ask individual companies if they would be open to lowering their rate of commission, having the winning top bidder pay some of your expenses, or reducing the deadline for the buyer to finish their actions required to complete a successful sale.
Selling without any help
Or you could think about selling your home with lapsed planning permission without any help from a third party, such as an estate agent or auctioneer. This has the advantage of meaning you’ll avoid needing to pay any commission once you’re able to sell your property.
But you will be required to take care of all the steps involved with finding a buyer, starting with producing a listing for your house or flat and advertising it, then scheduling viewings and giving people tours of the home, hearing offers and finally taking one to exchange of contracts.
It can be a lengthy and stressful experience and is only suggested for people who have managed to sell a property with a lapsed planning before, or that have a friend or family member with such a history who is willing to help for free with securing a buyer. If you don’t, you could be looking at more than a full year before you are able to complete the sale.
If selling without any assistance seems too overwhelming but you are committed to not paying fees to sell your home, you should get in touch with an honest no-fee quick buyer. These companies, like LDN Properties, make rapid and fair offers to purchase a very wide range of homes, including those with lapsed planning, and they promise to never charge sellers any commission – so you’ll be able to achieve your goal of avoiding fees with selling.
And you’ll get an additional bonus of having the entire selling timeline reduced to just a handful of weeks, compared to the many months or longer that you might face when selling on your own. Quick buyers are able to move at such as fast rate because they already have in place the financial resources to purchase your home, with no waiting to first get approved for a mortgage.
Top queries and answers about selling a house with lapsed planning
When you are thinking of selling your home quickly, you may wish to ask some questions beforehand ranging how to sell with legal problems through to selling without a valuation. Here are some of the top questions you may want to ask about selling a house with lapsed planning:
Your top questions when selling a house with lapsed planning
There are several justifications for why a homeowner might have sought and obtained planning permission from a local authority but then never started the relevant construction project, and it has since become lapsed. The owner might have experienced some financial difficulty and could no longer afford the work, or they may simply have changed their mind about doing it.
If you previously had planning permission approved at your home but it has since lapsed, you could consider reapplying for it before trying to find a buyer for the property. The benefit of doing so is that buyers will likely look even more favourably on your house or flat, but there are downsides including the process possibly taking a long time and being quite expensive.
Some buyers will look more favourably on your property because it once had planning permission, because they will take this as a sign that it should be relatively easy to secure such an approval in the future as the next owner. But other buyers may be wary of their ability to get planning permission again, particularly if the local authority has revised its approval rules.
If you choose to sell your home through an auction or using the services of an estate agent then you will not be able to avoid being charged commission, and this fee will be deducted right away from the eventual property sale proceeds. By contrast, you won’t pay commission if you sell without any third party help or if you sell your home to a zero-fee quick home buyer.
Contacting LDN Properties or another legitimate no-fee quick buying quick buyer will usually be the speediest method for selling any type of home, as it should only take a few short weeks. The other typical options for finding a buyer – using an estate agent, an auction or selling without any assistance – may all take several months or even more than a year in some situations.
You can ask quick home buyers whether they belong to an independent organisation called The Property Ombudsman (TPO), which publishes rules to protect owners from fraud in the fast buying industry. Genuine TPO members, like LDN Properties, must follow these regulations, which should give you additional peace of mind when selling your house or flat to them.
