Questions about creating two separate rentals within one double storey house...

It has been suggested to us that if we are lifting a house and moving it on the block to give a larger backyard to proposed townhouses, then why not at the same time create two separate levels of living and install fire proofing between floors, and anything else required within Brisbane City Council to allow us to rent top and bottom separately.

Before I even research with local agents whether this will limit our pool of tenants I thought I'd ask here if anybody has done this. I always think I'd hate to rent the top half of a house with another family or couple in the bottom half. It just doesn't feel right (to me).

If they want a unit, wouldn't they rent a unit?

Properly separated, legally done, I'm wondering who would rent the "upstairs" or "downstairs" of an old well renovated house over the same sized townhouse or unit? This is suburbia, Coorparoo.

I don't want to let my prejudices against such a living style to stop us making a better choice than just making one large two level house.

We would get more rent from two levels, but are we thinning our rental pool too much?

 

The DA is already in council, so no changes for now. I'd not considered turning a house into two levels able to be rented separately. I'm sure we would get more rent, but unsure if this is what the Coorparoo market is wanting. I will check with local PMs but thought I'd check here first.

 

For anybody interested, I emailed the PM who found my last tenant. Her response was that twice in the past six months she tried to rent a split house. She found tenants were concerned about what the tenants would be like in the other "half", party animals, noisy kids, who looks after the yard, who uses the yard etc. She said in both cases, she ended up renting both houses as a whole after having trouble renting the levels separately.

My concern was that people looking for apartment, unit or townhouse living are unlikely to be looking at a "house" and it would diminish the rental pool for that particular house. She confirmed this to be the case, in her recent experience.

This is just one agent, and I will do more research, but her response is pretty much what I thought would be the case. We both agreed that it is like expecting (and getting) more rent from renting out rooms individually, but way more work finding individual tenants happy to live with strangers, and of course, more work as they leave, filling one bedroom in a house of strangers.

I guess if a developer buys a block that comes with a house that cannot be removed from the block, then it makes sense to make what is four townhouses and one house into four townhouses and a house split into two, ie. six dwellings. That gives more profit on sale of the finished product, and the developer likely will sell and not continually be looking for tenants for an unusual house, split into two.

 

Thanks mcarthur. That is good to know. I also don't mind lower rent for less hassle and less vacancies. We already look after the yards for these as they are big blocks and tenants don't want to spend half their weekend mowing, so I could easily continue that, but the narrowing of the band of tenants who want half a house is my big concern. It seems it is a valid concern.