Commercial to residential

Hey all, bit of a noob here. Bought a house recently. Gold Coast, QLD. Zoned medium density residential. Normal (old) double storey house. It was once used as offices (hair dresser, lawyer, etc). It was most recently rented as residential through an agent, agent said it's residential, conveyancer said it's residential (didn't do any searches because everyone said it's fine, perhaps a bit dumb, but seemed OK at the time).

Anyway, got the first rates notice and it's close to $10k per year. Called the council, who said it's because the premises are commercial classification (they were vague and unhelpful, but I presume that means the building isn't class 1a). To reclassify as residential and have rates adjusted, they suggested reaching out to a private certifier. PCs say to speak to a town planner, but town planners shrugged it off as well. Bit of back and forth - nobody can give a simple answer.

Happy to spend a bit to get it up to current code (smoke alarms, etc) but not sure what else might bring us undone. Just want to live in the place and pay reasonable rates.

Anyone got any tips on process, who to speak to, etc?

 

Selling in qld usually includes a rates and body corp (if applicable) disclosure. Was the rates thing disclosed somewhere?

 

Just wait until you get your bill for land tax, that'll make your eyes water.

 

Yeah it was, and the solicitors and agent played it right down, suggesting that it'd all get sorted once the title moved over. Pretty naive to trust them on their word, in hindsight.

 

The land value is pretty much bang on $600k which I understand is where land tax starts, so land tax liability would be negligible - unless I'm missing something.

 

Hey John. I'm not sure if your question was answered. What you are looking to do is essentially a Material Change of Use (to convert the commercial building to a "dwelling house"). Under the Gold Coast planning scheme, a Dwelling House is Accepted Development in the medium density residential zone so you don't require town planning approval to do this so a town planner won't be involved at all.

Assuming the building was lawfully used for commercial purposes, you will probably find that the existing building is a Class 5 or 6 building (as per the Building Code of Australia). To convert this back into a dwelling house, you will need to officially convert it back into a Class 1a building.

As Council suggested, you will need to apply for a change of classification, which your building certifier can organise. I would suggest speaking with a certifier to find out what is involved in this process, specifically if there are any changes required to the building to comply with the BCA.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks LJW, it got sorted. For posterity, here's what happened:

After a few calls back and forth to various council departments, we were told that if the building was 1a, then they'd just adjust the rates accordingly. We lodged a search for the building's Certificate of Classification and boom - 1a. So they adjusted the rates and backdated to our settlement date.

Not sure how it got to the point where it was assigned a commercial rating (and being used as a commercial premises) without an MCU to change it to a class 5 or 6 on record, but I no longer care. We got the outcome we wanted.

Thanks all for your insights.

 

Good stuff. Glad it all worked out.