Property Developer wants my house.....what to do?

Astaroth

A work colleague had a developer interested in buying 1/2 his garden for the building of a new house (the garden was massive and backed onto another road so there wasnt any issue that way and a few of the neighbouring houses had evidently done it in the past.... he was happy, had sold a 3 bed house for £350,000 to buy this new 4 bed for £425,000 and then got £120,000 for 1/2 his garden), the developer negotiated on a price with him but made the offer conditional that my friend applied for planning permission prior to the same but the developer would refund him the cost of the PP irrespective.

IJJoseph

Snow_Dog wrote:

The other thing to consider is if you neighbour sells and he has the other large property and your neighbours, its not nice but he could drive you out with dodgy tenants etc.

I'm fairly confident that the large property is uninhabitable and HAS to be pulled down. Certainly that was the view of the previous owner. Putting new flats there would either have no effect on the value or actually increase the value of my property. I don't intend to be greedy but it has to be worth my while moving.

To give you an idea I am 50 yards from the local beach (I don't have a sea view though and there is no way you could get one). If I were to move to another 4 bed property in the vicinity of the beach then I would need to increase my mortgage by £100k. I doubt the developer would consider overpaying by that much.

It is possible that they just want a strip of land at the back of my and my neighbours garden in order to gain access to another plot of land so that they can provide parking for the flats. If this is the case then I'd have to refuse to sell because my garden is not very big as it is.

IJJoseph

OK......today I recieved a letter from the estate agents saying that they had recieved an offerfor my property above the market value. Well.....they haven't been in my house so they don't know what the market value is (I've extended at the back and have added a 4th bed and 2nd bath).....I suppose they could have checked on the planning webpage of my local council. It'll be interesting to find out what they are offering. Am getting 3 independant valuations next weekend.

MORPH3US

Sounds like you have it all in hand mate.....

Keep us informed!

M

sneekymum

IJJoseph wrote:

OK......today I recieved a letter from the estate agents saying that they had recieved an offerfor my property above the market value.

Had you instructed the estate agent to sell your house?

How do they expect to be paid? There is no agreement that you will pay them anything for this "Service".

Don't be bullied out of your home - if you're not interested in selling your house and/or garden then tell them to clear off.

I have some experence of (nice) developers who have had great sucess in buying property to demolish for land - by offering a range of values dependent on the number of units (houses or flats) which will be built. This gives some reassurance that the original owner will share the benefit and have no bad feeling of being done out of a fortune.

IJJoseph

Well this week the Estate Agents went to see my neighbour and offered him £50k below the market value!
My neighbour told him to sling his hook. Estate Agent backtracked and said it was an opening gambit!
I did some research and have found a property of an equal size to mine 100yds up the road. It's on the market at £130k more than the agent offered my neighbour. I've phoned the agent and advised him not to bother contacting me unless their client is prepared to offer £190k more than he has come to the table with. I figure that it will cost £20k in fees etc to move and so I think £40k is fair recompense for my inconvenience.

Robert_Sterling

A developer does not know what the value of a house and garden will be to hiim/her until they have submitted planning plans and had them approved. Typically, in my area, a developer tries to get three or more neighbours to agree to sell their houses so that they can be replaced by flats.
How many flats. 14 or less is OK. 15 or more and the value of the site goes down because you have to include social housing in the planning. as a result of all this the developer makes ONE, subject to contract, offer for all three, or more, plots.
The neighbours can argue among themselves about the division of the money.
A good starting point is to allocate the money pro rata to the frontage of each property. A neighbour might arue that they desrerve more because their house is worth more. The developer is going to knock all the houses down. Frontage is the key factor. The depth of the plot is less significant provided it is sufficient to provide adequate parking facilities. So the developer makes an offer based on what the site is worth to him. The offer might be 40% of what he hopes to get from selling the new flats. You agree to this "subject to contract offer" having taken legal advice on the "contract". You wait several months to see whether planning permission is given etc.
Good luck :j :j :j


P.S. Do not accept the first offer. Call in other developers for further offers.