It's not just what's inside that matters!

In a newsletter earlier in the year I looked at whether a garden added value to a property and concluded that in the majority of cases gardens and outside spaces did add value. More recently I’ve seen several articles on the benefits a garden shed or garden room can add to a property and given that we’re now entering the Summer months I thought I’d investigate whether this new phenomena of the Home Office, Man Cave and She Shed can in fact add value to a property.

Historically the humble garden shed has been used for the storage of garden tools and the other paraphernalia that we use during the Summer months such as the barbecue and the garden furniture but it seems that there has been a revolution in the use of garden buildings, whereby the garden shed has been transformed into the home office, the workshop, the studio, the gym, the dining room, guest suite, playroom, snooker room and many other different uses and they’re popping up in gardens all over the country.

Some 4.2million of us it seems have now given up the daily commute through the rush hour traffic and have opted to work from home. There are apparently over 21 million sheds/garden rooms in gardens across the UK and we are becoming increasingly aware that the addition of an outside building to a property is a flexible way to create additional space to our homes from the outside.

Some members of the property industry have said that a garden room can add as much as one per cent to the value of your property but I have to confess that I haven’t seen any meaningful statistics to support this. What is clear however, is that garden rooms are definitely on trend and bring benefits to property owners in the versatility of their uses but also enhance saleability. Many prospective buyers are looking to tick the garden room box on their list of things that they are looking for when wanting to purchase a property.

If you’re looking to erect a building in your garden, as a keen supporter of businesses local to our area I would suggest that you contact your local supplier of sheds/garden rooms and ask their advice about what building you might add to your garden. Garden sheds don’t generally require planning permission but I would always seek the advice of your local planning office before embarking on a garden building venture, just to make sure that you understand the regulations.