Repair, Renovate and Rebuild With The Financial Clout of a Remortgage!

The extremely slow growth of the property market and the fact that lenders are now loosening up their lending criteria means that more and more people are looking to remortgage in order to fund home improvements rather than move house.

Plenty of families will need an extra bedroom for a new baby, they might want to add a conservatory to give extra space for entertaining guests, or are they might even be thinking about adding a proper Granny annexe for visitors, or Grannies.

With the government recently stating that they will happily aid people in building, renovating and extending their own homes, it would seem that the future is bright for those who intend on such projects. But before you start work on your property, there are several things to consider.

You will need plans drawn up for the new build if you are planning an extension to your property. These will need to be professional as they would need to be submitted to the local council, and used by the builders. You can sometimes have these done by a surveyor but it is best to have them drawn up by an architect for more precise plans.

You may also need to find a project manager who can keep a close eye on everything, and make decisions when they need to be made. Of course, as it is your own home you may want to do this, but you will need to beware that this can be time consuming and may require you to take time off work in order to manage the project properly.

Get a good idea about who is going to project manage the construction; it is possible to do the project management yourself and that can appear to be cost efficient, but there are drawbacks. It is very time consuming and you need to know what you are doing. Sometimes the job can be done by your architect, which is probably a good idea on bigger jobs.

You need to find out if you need any permission from local government to carry out the work. In most instances, the answer is yes. If the building works include erecting a new building, extending or altering your current home, or adding extra fittings to a building (such as an extra window), then it will more than likely require planning permission. The designs will need to be checked by your local planning officers to ensure it complies with building regulations.

If you are completing the job yourself, this is your responsibility, however if it is being done by your builders, it will tend to be theirs, but make sure to double check, because whoever does the checking, the costs of ignoring planning rules will always fall on you.

You will also need to consider how you will fund the building work. Considering that a remortgage may take several weeks to arrange, it is often wise to research the best remortgage rates several months in advance of starting the project. You'll need to go through the remortgage process and have the money available to pay builders or to buy raw materials.

By applying for a remortgage, you can also often find a cheaper deal, so you will be benefiting from the exercise in more ways than one. With interest rates set to increase this year, it would be a good move to fix your interest rate now while rates are still very low. Once the base rate increases, so will the interest rates on the mortgage products.


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Timothy Frodsham writes for JustRemortgages.com one of the UK's top sites for the latest remortgage rates and best remortgage deals.