Anyone else watching agricultural land prices?

lostinrates

Conrad wrote: »

Good for you, we need more like you to think about indegenous flora and fauna.

I used to be into formal gardens, herbaceous borders and so on, but now I'm much more enlivened by natural scapes. Monty Donn once said you can't improve on natural scapes and I agree.

I really don't get these people that grown nothing but one foreign species, such as Dalihas, what a totaly pointless shallow activity.

LOL, shame most planners won't agree with you . I love formal gardens too, well, English Style gardens, herbacious borders and loosely tubling old fashioned roses with lavender and would certainly have the area surrounding my home as that, but grassland is amazingly wonderful and diverse: its taken for granted by almost everybody, even farmers have long favoured seed crop grass to meadow grass (that is a generilsation for which I apologise to farmers) and its become the norm to many an eye.

I have to say, the weather recently has been a test to my commitment. Digging the ditches by hand when you are as weak and wobbly as I in the cold wet and snow has not been an enjoyable experience, but the run off from neighbouring land has clogged them and to leave them in this weather would have been atrociously unfair of us.

Davesnave

Conrad wrote: »

Good for you, we need more like you to think about indegenous flora and fauna.

I used to be into formal gardens, herbaceous borders and so on, but now I'm much more enlivened by natural scapes. Monty Donn once said you can't improve on natural scapes and I agree.

I really don't get these people that grow nothing but one foreign species, such as Dalihas, what a totaly pointless shallow activity.

Errrrr..... I have a dahlia going commercial soon....But, no, I don't do monoculture; I just like an area of 'hot' garden, in a Christopher Lloyd sense, you understand! Let's face it, if B&Q are going to flog goodness knows how many thousand dahlias in the next few years, one of them may as well be mine. I can then use the money to buy some good ol' native trees.

What money? I am still in £600 debt to the Royalty Administrators over my last introduction four years ago!

lostinrates

I can't grow dahlias. I've tried. They never come up...slugs maybe?

Davesnave

lostinrates wrote: »

I can't grow dahlias. I've tried. They never come up...slugs maybe?

Mmm, probably. Mine are fussed-over and taken inside the greenhouse, but 25 years ago we had an allotment, and the ones we had for cutting on there always came through OK.

We'll see how much time we have for them when there's a few acres to sort out. It'll probably be down to natural selection.

planning_officer

GDB2222 wrote: »

I'm a city dweller and trying to get my head around this. Can somebody just fill me in if I have got this wrong:-

1. There are houses around that are set aside for agricultural workers, and these are *a lot* cheaper than understricted houses.

Yes - they're subject to agricultural occupancy conditions - the price s are around 30% less than if they were on the open unrestricted market.

GDB2222 wrote: »

2. If you buy one of these and you are not an agricultural worker, what happens? Do they come and cut your balls off so that you'll be less trouble in the future? Or do you just get fined? Or turfed out?

You will get turfed out! If someone doesn't comply with the restriction, they cannot live there.

GDB2222 wrote: »

3. If you have a bit of land with the house, you can become an agricultural worker? Does it matter how much land, whether you are farming it for profit, how much of your time you spend on it?

You need to be working in agriculture, i.e. it needs to be your main income - so you cannot just have a bit of land and work in the city for example.

GDB2222 wrote: »

4. If you have a restricted house and you can't sell it, you can have the restriction removed? Too good to be true!

No - definitely not! It is exceedingly hard to get the restriction removed. You would need to prove that there is no demand for a house with an agricultural restriction - which would involve at least 2 years of marketing - and only then, if no serious offers are received would you stand any chance of getting the restriction lifted. The point is, that these houses are in rural areas where development is very strictly controlled, so that a 'normal' unrestricted house would never have been granted planning permission. They are only given permission when the applicant has proved there is a demand for such a dwelling, which again, is difficult to do.

lostinrates

planning_officer wrote: »

You need to be working in agriculture, i.e. it needs to be your main income - so you cannot just have a bit of land and work in the city for example.

.

Only part I'd really question of the post above. It depends how the restriction is worded. Some allow a householder to work in agriculture (i.e. one person can have any job but the other can get all or most of income from agriculture) and some allow people retiring from agriculture to buy them. A family member of mine has a restriction extending to agriculture or equestrianism(south cotswolds), and I remember my parents looking at one in N. Wiltshire that would have allowed my mother as a second earner to fulfil the requirement. Some have further restrictions requiring purchaser to be a local agriculture worker. Or used to. The equestrian and hobby agriculture press used to carry lots of adverts about breaking ties, I don't know whether they still do or how affective these people were.

planning_officer

True, I should perhaps have clarifed that - the conditions require someone to be either working in agriculture or last working in agriculture - this means that a farmer is not forced to move house when he retires, which would be a bit harsh!