Buying Land off the local Council

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  • keystone
    keystone Posts: 10,916 Forumite
    Get a valuer (NOT an estate agent) to tell you the value of the land. Its intrinsic value is directly related to the ability to build on it (particularly if it has access to a road) rather than how it might affect the value of your property or providing you with a garden. You'll prolly find out that its value is prolly in the 200/300 area but armed with that you should have a starting point negotiating position. Prolly cost you 50 quid or so.

    I bought a piece of land off my neighbour who was selling up a few years ago to straighten out the boundary between our properties. My valuer put a tag of £ 200 on it. I ended up having to pay £1 a foot but it was worth it. I've ended up with two sets of title deeds too. One for my property as originally purchased showing the boundary as it was then and another for an odd shaped bit of land covering approx 1500 sq ft thats totally surrounded by other parcels of land. IMHO the Council are wrong to make a judgement about the resultant effect on your property value - it should be done on the actual value of the land and they are being greedy. Their financial situation doesn't give them carte blanche to rip off the people that pay their wages!

    Just my 2c.

    Cheers
    The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits. - Einstein
  • vaio
    vaio Posts: 12,287
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    keystone wrote: »
    ……..I bought a piece of land off my neighbour who was selling up a few years ago to straighten out the boundary between our properties. My valuer put a tag of £ 200 on it. I ended up having to pay £1 a foot but it was worth it. I've ended up with two sets of title deeds too. One for my property as originally purchased showing the boundary as it was then and another for an odd shaped bit of land covering approx 1500 sq ft thats totally surrounded by other parcels of land……..
    The council are asking £4k for a bit of land worth £500ish so sort of x8 in valve, you paid £1500 for something valued at £200 so x 7.5 in value. Sounds like the going rate for selling land to a neighbouring land owner is to get it valued and then multiply that by 7.5 or 8.
    keystone wrote: »
    ………IMHO the Council are wrong to make a judgement about the resultant effect on your property value - it should be done on the actual value of the land and they are being greedy. Their financial situation doesn't give them carte blanche to rip off the people that pay their wages!........
    See your point but the other side of that coin is councils duty to maximise the sale price of assets. Personally if my council were involved I’d expect them to extract as much as possible from the OP (who also has the option of carrying on renting or relinquishing the land altogether)

    Any valuation must take into account the added value to the new owner should he acquire it. 25 square metres of grazing paddock is worth just about nothing, the same area as a parking space in a posh block of flats in London would rent for £150k a year, it would form half a building plot in my area so be worth about £25k or more.

    In the OPs case it provides (or increases) their garden which will have an affect on the value of their property which presumably the council have factored into their offer price.

    Similarly, if the acquisition made a “split the garden and build another house” plan possible then the cost should reflect that.

    I’d make exactly the same arguments if the boot was on the other foot and it was the council who wanted to buy, say for road-widening. Then the value would not be the value of a strip of scrubby road verge but the loss in value to the house owners property plus some.
  • Inactive
    Inactive Posts: 14,509 Forumite




    We're being held to ransom as home owners. We can't afford the price they are demanding, but won't be forced to pay over the odds either. Does any one out there know if they can do this? Surely, this can't be legal to have one price for us and another for anyone else! Also, what can we do - if we don't pay we lose the garden altogether. :mad:

    Pay up, or lose it, by the sound of things.

    The council is duty bound to get the best possible price.
  • keystone
    keystone Posts: 10,916 Forumite
    vaio wrote: »
    The council are asking £4k for a bit of land worth £500ish so sort of x8 in valve, you paid £1500 for something valued at £200 so x 7.5 in value. Sounds like the going rate for selling land to a neighbouring land owner is to get it valued and then multiply that by 7.5 or 8.
    Mmm - thats a bit of a stratch really. "Going rate" based on two examples more like a coincidence. In my case the vendors representative originally asked for double what finally I paid. My point is to get an independent valuation otherwise theres no negotiating position.
    See your point but the other side of that coin is councils duty to maximise the sale price of assets. Personally if my council were involved I’d expect them to extract as much as possible from the OP (who also has the option of carrying on renting or relinquishing the land altogether)
    Actually I agree. In this case though, and wev'e only had one side of the story itmust be said, it looks as though the Council are being duplicitous.
    Any valuation must take into account the added value to the new owner should he acquire it. 25 square metres of grazing paddock is worth just about nothing, the same area as a parking space in a posh block of flats in London would rent for £150k a year, it would form half a building plot in my area so be worth about £25k or more....................Similarly, if the acquisition made a “split the garden and build another house” plan possible then the cost should reflect that.
    Yes - hence my point about access for development. In this case it would seem that the Council have attached a fairly arbitrary value and without any consistency.
    I’d make exactly the same arguments if the boot was on the other foot and it was the council who wanted to buy, say for road-widening. Then the value would not be the value of a strip of scrubby road verge but the loss in value to the house owners property plus some.
    I take your point but in the example of my own experience the deal was done prior to the neighbouring property being put on the market and had absolutely zero effect on the sale price.

    Cheers
    The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits. - Einstein
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