The weekend before last the landlord of the shop I rent informed me that he is now intending to sell the building, which includes separate offices upstairs which are shortly being vacated. Some years back I’d asked him to let me know before he put it on the market and that is what he’s done. Neither of us was certain about the value but I am expecting £200000-£250000.

I’d like to buy the place myself partly as a retirement investment and rather than take my chances with a new landlord who would be unlikely to be as easy going as the current owner.

I can manage a 10% deposit based on those figures but my initial investigations suggest that that will not be enough. It has been suggested that I could borrow against my home property to raise the deposit but that would no doubt incur another set of fees. My home is valued in the same bracket so I wouldn’t be able to raise the whole loan against it.

Do any of you know better than me what my options are?

Can you free some capital from your house to raise the deposit a bit? 25% is pretty common on commercial. There will be fees but it is often a cheap way to borrow money. In fact I’d be tempted to maximise the borrowing on the house to minimise the borrowing on the commercial property. This will likely be cheaper but much riskier. Your home is at risk etc…

understand the value to a landlord is the rent receivable, from whom and for how long.

The value for you is as an owner occupier. These are not the same thing and rarely come to the same numerical value.

The office coming vacant upstairs is a problem and a blessing. It’s a problem in that there is not a core chunk of income on which the lending bank can hang their loan, a blessing in that it will suppress the price of the property.
You really need professional (MRICS) advice before putting a figure on anything.

The bank may want you to put a lease in place on your retail space. They may accept that some other personal guarantee may suffice, or even cross-collateralisation with your house.

Whatever, you may find you have little access to the right/flexible/best value property loans without using a specialist broker.