Buying land in UK

[sunny darko]

How is agricultural land generally bought and sold?

I look in my local paper but nothing. i look online and find mostly junk.

Is it a case that land is generally rare and not sold often or am I just looking in the wrong places?

I wish to buy a smallish field for private parties and possibly to grow a personal amount of food crop on.

 

[akirk]

agricultural estate agents
normal estate agents
websites on the internet
privately

best bet is go and talk to land owners - get your name out there and known that you are interested - you will be charged over agricultural rate - e.g. an acre of agricultural selling normally for c. £5,000 may be sold to you as amenity land for £20,000 - £30,000 and expect there to be covenants banning, or requiring profit sharing on any upsell, esp. if sold for property.

note that you only have 29 days a year for alternative use without planning and growing vegetables will take more than that - growing vegetables on a small scale may not count as agricultural - -check with your planners...

Alasdair

 

[sunny darko]

Is the price hike basically because I'm not a fellow farmer? Not in the club as it were.

 

[Bob]

Is the price hike basically because I'm not a fellow farmer? Not in the club as it were.

No. It's because you only want one acre. The lower price would be for farms of say 50 acres like this one.
Having said that you may get a cheaper plot at auction but you would need to consider the access and any problems with noise nuisance

 

[papverpoppies]

It all depends on where the land is situated, and what the restrications on it are.

Land is hard to come by, in small pockets in some areas, and if the land is suitable for building - then it will fetch a very high price.

It has nothing to do with being in the 'click', so to speak, land sells for what the estate agents, land agents value it at, along with demand.

Most of the land in this area goes for auction - as it fetches a good price.
We did have one field in the village just under an acre that sold for £11.000 plus costs, several years ago, the people who own it are growing vegetable (sort of).
We think they took a chance, in the hope they would get planning permission to build a house - not a cat in hells chance (well not for the forseeble future)!

You, really need to check with the local planners, and environmental health, before you buy any land, as each area has its own stipulations, and it can run very costly if you take a chance or run fowl or the planning guide lines.

Just keep looking and asking.

Poppy xx

 

[MASSEY]

I have a few domain names one is LandWithPlanningPermission.co.uk i think their might be a niche for a good resource site on land and selling etc because the web seems to be junk central for land at the minute. Wish i had the time to do it though.

 

[akirk]

Is the price hike basically because I'm not a fellow farmer? Not in the club as it were.

In some ways yes it is market values, those buying small plots generally do so for purposes such as horses / development etc which carry higher value for the land... A farmer selling an acre (for convenience etc) to another farmer would sell at agricultural prices as that is the value of it's use, all agricultural land carries an agricultural banding which affects it's agricultural value, and this is basically set by agricultural quality of land (type of soil /drainage etc), however when selling land to be used for a horse / other more mundane purposes the basis of valuation is very different

Also, when a farmer is buying land, they are used to paying 5 / 6 k max, so that is their base for purchasing... A private individual has usually only bought land in the form of their house, when you spend £250,000 on a house with less than a qtr of an acre, then suddenly £30,000 for an acre seems cheap

Alasdair

 

[sunny darko]

What do you think of this plot...

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-28776242.html

Good price

 

[akirk]

if that third map is what I think it is, someone is trying to be clever - they are splitting a field into 'housing' plots with space for access roads and selling it on the basis that it might one day get planning permission - i.e. each plot is a tiny space selling for £8k

if you consider that a housing plot might be 30ft x 100ft (3,000 sqft) = 272sqm, then there are roughly 14 plots per acre so they are selling at £112k per acre - very expensive for grass, but cheap for development.

you are probably going to have fairly tight covenants on that as it will only work as a concept if the seller controls the future through covenants to allow for development as appropriate - i.e. you may not be able to use the land in just any way you want... as keeping goats on a plot amongst houses might not be conducive to good neighbourly relationships

do your investigation - is it likely that development plans will change to include this area? if so, it could be a good deal, if not it is expensive!

you take the risk

Alasdair

 

[roydmoorian]

There are 156 plots on this website

http://www.fwi.co.uk/property/browse/land.htm

Farmers, landowners and their agents tend to have a fairly good idea of values in their own districts