Garden land: estimated cost

notyetretired

We recently bought a small piece of land which allowed us to build a large shed. Neighbour charged £1500 and we had to pay his legal fees as well as ours, which I am sure is standard. Lawyer bill was around £3000! (though there were some complications). My solicitor had warned me that the fees are the same regardless of the acreage bought.

Incidentally, neighbour himself was buying a small chunk of field from a local landowner who refuses to sell anything for less than £5000 because of the hassle involved in directing solicitors etc.

dgl1001

Llyllyll wrote: »

This is not strictly a question about houses, but property related and I couldn't find anywhere more suitable to post.

There is a triangular plot of land (approx. 50ft x 50ft x 25ft) behind my house that the property behind owns. They can no longer maintain it and I am interested in buying it. There are no services to the land, no development potential, it cannot be accessed from the road and can only be accessed by three houses from their back gardens.

I want to use it to extend my garden and grow some fruit and veg. Can anyone offer any advice on how to value this so as to make a sensible and realstic offer.

Thanks in advance.

PS - I live in S Wales, 15 miles north of Cardiff.

Have you though about taking out a long lease on the land - should be cheaper?

boyse7en

notyetretired wrote: »

We recently bought a small piece of land which allowed us to build a large shed. Neighbour charged £1500 and we had to pay his legal fees as well as ours, which I am sure is standard. Lawyer bill was around £3000! (though there were some complications). My solicitor had warned me that the fees are the same regardless of the acreage bought.

Incidentally, neighbour himself was buying a small chunk of field from a local landowner who refuses to sell anything for less than £5000 because of the hassle involved in directing solicitors etc.

Those legal fees sound huge: We just sold a garage and driveway to a neighbor and our solicitors costs were £390, including bank transfer fees, land registry etc (and £25 for 'copies'! what are they doing? copying by hand in Gold ink!)
I would expect the buyers solicitors fees were similar.

Re: Value. We are in the corner of a field, and asked the farmer about selling the rest of the field to us. Agricultural land was about £2k per acre at the time, field is 3 acres so we offered £10k (ie a 40% premium) and were turned down flat.
People tend to want to keep the land they own.

GDB2222

£400 sounds like a very low figure to me, too. The old lady has no obligation to garden that triangle of land, so there's no down-side for her in keeping it. Unless she's in dire straits, £400 is not going to make any difference to her financially. It's a decent-sized piece of land being discussed here, and I would have thought in terms of several thousands. In fact, the old lady might be offended if you offer so little: "Does he think I'm that daft?"

Like others have said, why not ask if you can cultivate it for free in return for a bit of spare produce? Then, after you've been doing that for a couple of years, you might make an offer to buy it.

notyetretired

Dead right Boyse, it was shocking to us too! The process turned up loads of issues with rights of access, plus the tiny bit of land we bought actually turned out to be 2 different parcels of land. The whole thing took months.

In the end the other lawyer waived their fees (because they had made a complete mess of things) so we ended up paying just over £2000 to our lawyer - but am not using them again! £135 per hour, including phone calls, and another whack for every letter, etc. He did merrily write at the bottom of letters "Just to let you know that my bill is now up to £900", etc. The problem was that no-one seemed to realise how complicated it would be until it was well under way (or they didn't tell us anyway).

Davesnave

boyse7en wrote: »

Re: Value. We are in the corner of a field, and asked the farmer about selling the rest of the field to us. Agricultural land was about £2k per acre at the time, field is 3 acres so we offered £10k (ie a 40% premium) and were turned down flat.
People tend to want to keep the land they own.

If you add a couple of acres to a reasonable-sized property, that makes a paddock for Jemima's pony and puts your house into an entirely different league. You could add value of £50k, so £10k is too little, and the farmer knows it!

Richard_Webster

Richard what would the fees be to the buyer and the seller to convey this small bit of land. It could put one or the other off?

Around £250-£400 + VAT for each solicitor plus Land Registry Fee of £40 for buyer. Also seller (if he has a mortgage) may need to get mortgage lender to agree to release land and they will charge an admin fee for this which could be £100 or so. If seller tightly mortgaged they might want some of the mortgage paid off.

Llyllyll

Richard_Webster wrote: »

Around £250-£400 + VAT for each solicitor plus Land Registry Fee of £40 for buyer. Also seller (if he has a mortgage) may need to get mortgage lender to agree to release land and they will charge an admin fee for this which could be £100 or so. If seller tightly mortgaged they might want some of the mortgage paid off.

I've not heard from the owner yet. It appears as though I may have to rethink this then, especially with the typical costs involved.

Thanks for all the replies and thoughts.