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British Iron and Steel Federation houses are also known as BISF houses, and are sometimes called prefab homes and can be confused with other prefab properties that have a negative image for For houses, flats and other types of properties throughout the UK, having planning permission can be a great way to attract potential buyers because it gives them reassurance that they would already have legal approval to make physical changes to the home. This guide details what’s involved in selling this type of property and how to get a fair and speedy offer for it.
- What is planning permission?
- The process for obtaining planning permission
- How planning permission can help the sale of your home
- Getting your house or flat ready for buyers
- The sale of your property and Capital Gains Tax
- Four ways to sell a home with planning permission
- Frequently asked questions on selling property with planning permission
What is planning permission?
Planning permission is one of the most essential parts of property development throughout the UK, and it applies to any time you would like to make a physical change to your property.
In particular, you need to go through the process of applying for planning permission so that you are legally approved before building an extension or pursuing a large-scale renovation of a house, flat or other property, if you want to change whatever purpose the building is used for, or you are looking to construct new property, as outlined on the UK government’s website.
If you obtain planning permission then you have the right to pursue whatever construction work you outlined in your application for this approval, such as building an extension in the garden of the property, adding another floor to the home or converting the roof, and other examples.
Note that if you own a listed property, which will be designed as either Grade I, Grade II or Grade II* because of its architectural or historic importance, then you will often need to get planning permission and listed building consent in most cases where you want to make a change to the property.
The process for obtaining planning permission
If you already applied for and received planning permission for your property then you’ll have successfully completed the process, which can be time-consuming and costly. Alternatively, perhaps you already built an extension or other project at your property and you are retroactively applying for planning permission because you didn’t get it in advance.
The steps involved for seeking planning permission for a property are established in UK Government legislation known as the 2008 Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (Amendment) (No. 2) (England). This law amended a previous piece of legislation known as the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995, and combined they detail how to obtain planning permission.
To ask for planning permission, whether you have begun any construction work or not, you must fill out a formal application that will be submitted to your local authority. They will then closely review the specifics of your plans for the property, and decide whether to grant or reject planning permission, with a process that can take at least eight weeks and over 13 weeks.
There are different types of planning permission that you can apply for, including approval for large-scale changes to a home that may require you to pay fees and be more complex than more streamline planning authorisations for smaller renovations planned for a property. Some of these small-scale projects might not require a fee when applying for planning permission.
How planning permission can help the sale of your home
Planning permission is among one of the vital documents and other information that you will need to show buyers when trying to sell your house or flat, according to the HomeOwners Alliance, which represents UK residential property owners.
That’s because having this kind of approval in place is a great way to get more buyers interested in making an offer on your property, because they know that they won’t have to endure the lengthy and often costly process of applying for planning permission.
Another reason why having planning permission approved before trying to sell your home is that it may make buyers think the flat or house is more structurally sound. If a property lacks planning permission, does not comply with building regulations or is missing some other documentation, it’s possible that this might make some buyers wary about making an offer on the home.
Getting your house or flat ready for buyers
A crucial step involved with the sale of any leasehold or freehold house or flat is getting it ready for sale, and this starts with some zero-cost or reduced-cost steps to improve its appearance.
The exterior of your property will be the first thing that prospective buyers see, and that’s why you need to ensure it looks as good as possible. Spend some time and funds on fixing relatively easy problems like broken windows, chipped paint or missing roof tiles, and mowing any green space like a garden and removing any weeds. This will great a welcoming look for your property and make buyers think it’s more valuable than one that is not very well maintained.
Similarly, inside your home you should strive to remove as much clutter as you can from all the rooms, because this will help them to look larger to visitors. You should also tidy extensively inside and make sure all the floors and surfaces are clean. Also, it’s recommended that if you have any pets that you keep them locked away when people are visiting on viewings.
It can be more complicated to know how to proceed if your home has a major structural problem, such as subsidence, damp, flooding damage and many other similar scenarios.
One concern is that if you leave the problem "as is" when trying to find a buyer, they will not look favourably on the negative issue. They are likely to calculate how much it would cost them to repair the problem as the next owner of the property, and reduce their offer price by that amount. A solution would therefore be to spend money, effort and time on fixing the flaw before selling, because it should have the effect of eliminating this situation altogether.
However, many people who are looking to sell a home will not have the available resources to spend on repairing a problem with the property before finding a buyer, particularly those owners who are looking to sell within a matter of weeks rather than waiting for months.
If that’s your situation then don’t worry that you won’t be able to sell your property at a decent value, because you could always contact a quick home buyer like LDN Properties. This company has been buying properties throughout the UK since 2003 and makes fast and fair offers for each and every home, regardless of whether other buyers might see the property as having a problem that makes them think it’s much less valuable or not worth buying.
The sale of your property and Capital Gains Tax
There can be many costs involved with selling and owning a home, and one of these is the potential of having to pay Capital Gains Tax on the profit that you might make with the sale of your property.
This is a levy that the UK government imposes on the amount of gain, also simply called the profit, that someone makes when they sell a tangible and valuable asset such as a home, a car, artwork and more. Note that the tax, if it applies in your situation, will not be charged on the overall sale price of your property and will instead be based only on the profit made.
There are some ways to reduce how much Capital Gains Tax you owe, or to eliminate it completely, so ask a financial professional to explain these options.
Four ways to sell a home with planning permission
One vital decision that you’ll have to make when selling your home with planning permission is the method to use in order to find a buyer. The typical four choices come down to selling to a fast property buyer, trying your luck with a property auction, selling your home via an estate agent or selling without any assistance, and there are pros and cons with these methods.
Some of the choices available will help you get a very speedy sale of your home, whereas other methods will require that you pay commission which will increase your selling costs.
You can make it easier to find the right method for your unique wants and needs by first noting down the top priorities for your sale, such as your ideal price, the length of time that you are willing to wait to find a buyer, and whether you want to pay any fees when selling. Compare these facts against the details of the methods below to find your best possible match.
Selling to a fast property buyer
Fast buyers can make quick and fair offers for leasehold and freehold homes regardless of their type, size, shape, location, condition or age. The long list of purchases and offers made by LDN Properties across the UK since launching 15+ years ago includes houses with Japanese knotweed, timber frame homes, lock-up garages, bed and breakfast properties, houses near industrial estates, properties that have high levels of radon, student properties, penthouse flats, maisonettes and more.
These companies are called fast buyers due to the fact that they have the funds available to immediately purchase properties, without having to wait for weeks or months to first win approval from a lender for a mortgage that would cover the cost of buying your home. This reduces their average timeline for purchasing a property to just a few short weeks, and that speedy schedule includes paying owners the sale proceeds and the exchange of contracts.
In addition to being an incredibly rapid way to sell a home, fast buyers also have the additional advantage of never charging owners any commission for selling their properties. This means you are assured of receiving the full sale proceeds, which helps to lower your selling costs. Compare that to selling via an auctioneer or estate agent, which are two approaches to selling that require you to pay commission, which will increase your overall selling expenses.
It’s a very simple process to sell your property to a fast buyer, and it starts by calling them and inquiring about selling your home. Within the first hour of talking with you they should be able to make a tentative offer, and there’s no pressure to decide immediately on whether to accept it, because most fast buyers will give you at least a full week to think about the offer.
Should you decide to take the fast buyer up on their initial offer, they will usually then have a staff member come to your property in order to assess the outside and inside. This helps the company to make a more informed final offer for buying your house or flat.
And if you agree with the final offer for your home, the fast buyer will then contact your solicitor or other legal representative in order to sign all of the required legal documents and finalise the other necessary actions to complete the purchase as quickly as they can.
Trying your luck with a property auction
When you sell your home at an auction, you will be asked to decide on a reserve price, which is the cheapest value at which you can agree to sell your property. If you get a single bid on the home at this price then it’s legally deemed sold, and the winning high bidder can sue you in a bid to enforce the sale, should you try to back out of it once the auction is complete.
That’s why it’s very important for you to calculate a reserve price that will ideally generate the right return from the sale of your flat or house, after the auctioneer has deducted their fees. Usually, an auctioneer will make you pay commission as a percentage of the property’s auction sale price, and this will increase your selling costs because it will be taken out of the final process.
You could inquire with individual auctioneers about whether they’re willing to set a lower rate of commission, or alternatively have the winning high bidder pay some of your expenses. Both are viable strategies with some auctioneers that can help to lower your selling costs.
Remember also that if your property does not attract any bids at the auction then it will remain unsold, and you’ll have even more delay as you’ll have to begin again with finding a buyer.
Even if your home does sell the first time that you try to auction it, this is not a swift way to secure a buyer. That’s because there are several long waits involved, starting with a wait of many weeks or months between when you list the property for sale and the day on which the auction happens. And then after the home sells, the winning bidder will usually have 28 days to sign all of their required legal papers and complete their other tasks to formalise the purchase.
It’s worth asking specific auctioneers about whether they might be willing to set a shorter deadline for the buyer to finish their actions, which can help accelerate the process.
You might also be asked by the auctioneer to choose between selling your home using either the traditional or modern method of auctioning. With the traditional method, the auctioneer will create a listing for your property that includes photographs of it and describes the main features, including that it has planning permission, and they they’ll advertise this for several weeks or longer before the auction takes place on a set day and time. With the modern method, people can place bids on your home 24 hours a day, seven days a week, as soon as the listing is posted, and the top bid when the listing expires after several weeks or months is the winner.
Selling your home via an estate agent
An estate agent will prepare a listing for your home, which should describe the property and feature photographs designed to make it look as good as possible, as a recent Yahoo News Finance article details. The estate agent will advertise this listing online, in local media and in their office, organise viewings for potential buyers, and hear any serious offers.
This can help to save you a lot of work and reduce your stress when selling, but remember that you will have to pay an estate agent fees for doing these tasks. This fee will be subtracted from the final sale proceeds, which will increase your costs.
And this is also far from the swiftest way to sell your property with planning permission, as the entire process can often take more than an entire year. If you’d like to sell your home on a much faster timeline then you should consider other options such as using a fast buyer.
Note also that some estate agents might tell you a very attractive price for selling your home, even if they secretly know that you will not be able to generate many offers except at a much lower price. They do this because they want to have you agree to sell the home through them, so that they will be able to benefit from the commission they’ll charge if the property sells.
You can take steps to try and avoid falling for this trick, however, starting by asking a number of estate agents to give you free quotes for the price at which they think your flat or house could sell. Then you should look on Rightmove, Zoopla and other property sales websites and write down the current and past sale prices of homes like yours. The average of these values will be a much more accurate estimate of your home’s potential sale price.
Selling without any assistance
This can be the most stressful way to sell a home, because the burden will be on you to take care of every aspect, starting with creating and advertising a listing, scheduling viewings and showing potential buyers around the home, and considering any serious offers you got.
It’s a massive amount of work that you won’t be able to do in just your spare time, and that’s it’s only suggested as a viable option for someone that has sold a home in the past, or that knows a skilled friend or family member who might be willing to assist them for free. Otherwise, you run the risk of not getting a serious offer from a buyer for more than an entire year.
Supporters of this method of selling a property note that it has the benefit of not requiring you to pay any commission to a third party, which can help with lowering your expenses.
However, this very same no-fee outcome is also available by selling your property to a zero-commission quick buyer – and with the added bonus that you’ll get a much faster sale, as these companies can typically finalise the process of buying a home within a few weeks. This makes quick buyers the ideal combination of reducing your costs and securing a rapid sale.
Top queries and answers about selling a BISF house
Homeowners looking for a quick sale of their property sometimes have questions for us, ranging from the types of property we will buy through to selling houses that have been improved. These are the questions we’re sometimes asked when selling a house with planning permission:
Your top questions when selling a property with planning permission
This is an approval that you must obtain before making any substantial physical changes to a property, which can include but is not limited to building an extension, pursuing a major renovation of a home or building a new property on the site. For listed buildings, it’s almost always required that you get planning permission before making any changes.
If you would like to make any significant structural changes to your leasehold or freehold house or flat then you must fill out an application that details your plans and then submit this to the local authority, who will decide whether to grant to reject the request. Typically it can take between eight and 13 weeks to get a decision, but it might take more or less time.
It is not guaranteed that having planning permission will automatically make your property easier to sell, but it will almost certainly be seen as a benefit by most buyers. They will have the peace of mind in knowing that would already have the necessary permission in place to pursue some structural changes to the home in line with what you originally applied for.
Yes, if your property has dry rot, damp, subsidence or any other type of structural problem then you can sell it as is without making changes and still get a fast and competitive offer if you contact a quick home buyer like LDN Properties. These companies are specialists in making offers to buy almost any type of freehold or leasehold property, no matter its condition.
You should consult with a tax professional because it’s possible that you will not have to pay any Capital Gains Tax on the sale of your leasehold or freehold property. If this tax does apply then it will typically be charged based on the amount of profit, also referred to as the gain, that you might make on the sale of the home, and it won’t be charged on the property’s overall sale price.
If you’d like to sell your home quickly then your best option is usually getting in touch with a quick buyer like LDN Properties, as they can purchase your property within a handful of weeks, which includes paying you the proceeds and exchanging contracts. But if you decide to sell via an auctioneer or estate agent or on your own then these can all take many months.
You might not need to pay any commission if you sell your home without any assistance or sell it to a no-fee quick buyer such as LDN Properties. By contrast, if you sell your property to an estate agent or auctioneer then they will charge commission as a percentage of the sale price.
