In my last newsletter 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. As we’re now approaching the Summer months I thought that it would be useful to take a look at whether the fairly recent phenomena of transforming a garden building into a Home office, She Shed and Man Cave can actually add value.
The humble garden shed that we’ve historically used for storage of garden tools and the other paraphernalia that we tend to use during the Summer months such as our garden furniture and the barbecue, seems to have undergone a transformation. Creative owners have now changed the use of this outdoor building into the studio, the workshop, the home office, the gym, the guest suite, the dining room, the play room, the snooker room and a myriad of other transformations and they’ve been popping up in gardens all over the country for a few years now. In fact, it seems that they’ve become so popular that many prospective buyers have got them on their tick list of property ‘must haves’ when they’re considering purchasing a property.
For those of us who are in need of a practical space such as an office, a workshop or a studio and don’t have an available room in our home, then a garden building can offer a solution, and the design possibilities are endless it appears. With many more millions of us now working from home and with approximately 21 million sheds/garden rooms in gardens across the UK we have become 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.
Whilst I haven’t seen any meaningful statistics to support the claim, some property professionals do say that a garden room/home office can add as much as one percent to the value of a property and it has become apparent that there is an increasing trend to install garden rooms in order to increase the versatility of a property and also to enhance saleability.
If you are looking to erect a building in your garden, as a keen supporter of local businesses, I’m sure that a local supplier will be more than happy to give their advice on what size and type of building might suit your garden. I would also advise that whilst garden sheds don’t generally require planning permission, you should always seek the advice of your local planning office before embarking on any building venture, to make sure that you understand the local planning regulations.