Did you ever know anyone who lived in semi or terrace buy up their neighbours and create one big house?

21 comments

1. I know someone who lives in two houses with a doorway cut into the common wall. Both sides have kitchens, stairs, front and rear doors etc. You’d have to tell the council and get them to treat it as one house to avoid paying two council taxes, as the higher single tax will almost certainly be lower than two separate ones. Not sure what they did with electricity, gas etc.
   Bear in mind of course that you could only do this if and when your neighbour wanted to sell, unless you could afford to offer them a large premium to encourage them to move.

2. Normally this wouldn’t be allowed. There are regulations around it in the covenants normally.

3. My dad bought the house next door when he retired as they wanted a bigger garden and could choose their own neighbours. He split it into 2 flats, my brother had one and his niece the other as she was at the nearby uni.

4. I’d happily buy the two houses either side of mine and just leave them empty to enjoy the peace and quiet.

5. A house a couple of doors down from where we used to live did this.

   Ours was one half of a pair of semis. Theirs was the same structure but it had been knocked through to make one house.

   I never went in there, but I heard that the layout was really weird.

6. Work colleague bought and moved into the house next door to his mother’s, then made a door to provide access between both. After his mother passed, he used the inheritance to eventually buy another neighbouring property which he rents out, but he still lives in the 2 adjoined homes.

7. Yes one of my family homes growing up was actually two semis with the walls knocked through , but still maintained two separate addresses I believe . I don’t know much about the ins and outs legality wise as this was 20 years ago but it was great for a large family !

8. We thought about it, but it would have ended up with a stupid layout so we didn’t bother.

9. My house was originally constructed as two houses (2 up, 2 downs) in 1912, and knocked together into one and extended after WW1. It makes for an interesting layout.

10. Yes, I’ve known quite a few people who have done this.

    Often those living with a large number of extended family members or who had a lot of major skeletons in the family closet that they did not want to risk neighbours hearing about during drunken rows.

11. A friend did it in the late 90s, the kitchen was removed from the left hand house to avoid council tax so that eventually when the kids grew up changing it back to two houses was easy.

12. The Beatles in Help

13. Yes. In Scotland, rural terrace the end two have been bought and knocked into one. I dont see why it would be any different in England. They will be your properties to do what you want to internally, as long as it doesn’t collapse!

14. The new layout would be a pain. You’d have to knock down a lot of walls, build new ones for various hallways, or to make it open plan. Plus moving doors/staircases etc. It would be much easier to just move.

15. Yes my gran lived in the middle cottage in a block of 3 terraced cottages. Over the years she then bought the other 2, knocked them all together and now has a large detached cottage

16. Hugh Grant?

17. I wouldn’t combine it – I quite like my little house.

    I’d be tempted to:
    1) Buy another identical terrace on the street
    2) Duplicate all my possessions into the new house.
    3) Live in one, whilst the other was being cleaned/maintained by a crack team of professionals I never have to open the door to wearing a food stained dressing-gown (and then try to excuse myself as they cleaned, room by room)
    4) Once current one was untidy, I’d simply walk into the clean fresh one and start again.

    My other idea (for more modest money) would be for neighbours to club together to buy a house on the street and use it as a shared space.
    Maybe somebody wants a quite place to work for an afternoon, place to meet friends for drinks, put up visiting family over Christmas etc. Could even stick it on airbnb to raise money to cover maintenance and the like.
    Just seems more efficient than everybody trying to maintain a spare bedroom, ‘just in case’

18. By winning the lottery, I assume you’re thinking a very substantial never-work-again amount. Lottery winnings of that magnitude come with a few perks. Moving is as simple as just getting to the next home. People do the moving for you, and that’s assuming that you really still want your old stuff.

19. Oh I do! The lane I grew up on had one family, I went school with their kids. They did this. Their house was so topsy turvy inside but I liked it. I guess it made sense they had 3 kids and the original house was probably only 3 beds so they did it so each kid got a bedroom.

20. I regularly stop at lights next to a semi detached that’s been knocked into one.

    The front door has been replaced with a window with a shitty mosaic on it and the garden gate in front of it has been bricked up.

    Just looks weird, just move into a bigger house

21. My friend lived in a house that had been 4 terraced farm cottages that were knocked through. The kitchen was the entire ground floor of the furthest left cottage, the living room was another, then family room, then a study/ boot room.
    I left something in a bedroom upstairs and above the boot room and it took me ages to get from the kitchen