Garage conversions 'should be considered carefully'

Homeowners looking to satiate their renovation desires by converting their garages into habitable areas should consider the overall impact on the value of their house before embarking on such work, the Home Builders Federation (HBF) has said.

While it is natural to assume that the creation of another room in a house would add value, access to offstreet parking is becoming increasingly desirable and hence should not be abandoned lightly, according to the HBF.

The federation also advised that local councils should be consulted before such alterations are made, not least because they would want to know how parking availability in the neighbourhood would be affected.

"It's strange – you can go to some areas and [a conversion] would add value, and you could go to other areas [like London] and it wouldn't add value," said HBF technical director Dave Mitchell.

"The local authority [could] say: 'Well, hang on a minute. We wanted a house of that size to have two parking spaces and it now clearly hasn't' or 'where are you going to accommodate the car that would have gone in the garage?," Mr Mitchell cautioned.

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