Usually yes, but check whether the house is listed before you start sketching the loft conversion. Hundreds of buildings in the area are listed. One conservation area covers part of it. The neighbours send in planning applications by the hundred every year. You can build here, but a lot of the town has a heritage officer taking an interest.
The area has 378 listed buildings: 2 at Grade I, 12 at Grade II* and 364 at Grade II. Listing covers the whole building, inside and out, so changing a listed home needs listed building consent on top of any planning permission. That applies to windows, doors, walls you want to knock through, and anything else a buyer might call a small job. If the house you're viewing is one of the 364 Grade II buildings, the rules are the same as for the other two grades; it's only the scale of scrutiny that changes. Buyers who fall for the period details and plan to rip half of them out tend to find the council keen on keeping them.
One conservation area falls within the area. Inside it, the council takes a closer interest in how a street looks, so changes that would be routine elsewhere can need permission, and demolition and work to trees usually need to be approved first. Outside it, ordinary planning rules apply.
There are also 8 scheduled monuments, the strictest form of heritage protection, which mainly cover buried archaeology and old structures. They only affect you if your land is next to or on top of one, in which case any digging becomes a conversation with Historic England before it's a conversation with a builder.
People here do alter their homes, and often. Between April 2024 and June 2026 the area logged 2,261 planning applications, and 940 of them came in the last twelve months. That doesn't tell you how many were approved, but it does tell you that extending a house in Margate is a normal thing to do, not a fight people give up on.
One listed building in the area is on Historic England's Heritage at Risk register. That means it's in poor condition, its repair may qualify for grant funding, and any work on it will be closely watched. It isn't a risk to the buyer of an ordinary house down the road.
In practice, the first question is the house's status. A house that isn't listed and sits outside the conservation area usually has permitted development rights, which let you do modest extensions and alterations without a full planning application, within national limits. A listed house, or one inside the conservation area, needs consent for more of what you'd want to change. Check the listing record and the conservation-area boundary before you make an offer, and ask the seller for any consents already granted for past work.
Freedom to alter a home is Margate's weak spot. It isn't a ban, but with this many listed buildings, extending the wrong house means paperwork, patience and a heritage officer with opinions. Choose the house for what you're allowed to do with it, not for what you'd like to do.