Anyone had dealings with bona vacantia for purchasing land?

k3v

To cut a long story short, i have just had an offer made to me by bona vacantia for a piece of land that runs down the side of my house which belongs to a dissolved company. The price is £1500 for the land (33m2), then £800 ish for the valuers fee and then £500 ish towards the cost of their legal fees. Do the fees sound reasonable? Is there any room to negotiate these prices? They told me they have to charge market value for the land, this is fair enough but if i dont buy it then no on else could make use of it. Its only for a garden extension that only i border onto. The valuation fees seem high considering they did mine and the adjacent piece of land in the same day and my cost was £800 and the other £1200. Has anyone got any experience of dealing with thses people.

Thanks in advance.

DVardysShadow

Never mind how they break the fees up. If they want to pay a valuer £800, it is neither here nor there to you. And 'Market value' is arguable. The only market is you and anyone else whose land borders the patch in question. So market value is what the highest bidder will pay. Do you want it? Does it improve your plot? Does it give you more control over an eyesore? And how long and wide is it? Is it a bit of land left over by the developer of your estate? Could you enclose it if you wanted to?

k3v

Thanks for the reply. Yes i do want it. This land is a left over piece of land of a housing estate. Its a grass verge on the entrance to the estate. A path runs between my gable end and this land due to my house being extended up the the boundary by the previous owner, This means i have a public footpath running down my gable end. My intention was to move the path over and put a fence between the path and my wall to stop vandalism etc. 20m long by roughly 2m tapering down to 1m is the size. Due t the footpath there is no enclosing it in. I have already thought about adverse possession. I have planning permision to move the path but when i applied for the stopping up order national grid flagged up an electric cable (gas/electric and telephones run down the path but only electric complained!) so i need a grant of easement (£1150)with them so that i can have a stopping up order but because im not the land owner, i cant enter into a grant of easement, and that led me to bona vacantia. Now due to escalating costs, this is last set of fees could be the straw that broke the camels back. I admit i have gone into this blindly and learnt as i went along but i was never told that the valuers fees would be so high. I want to try and put a low offer in but im worried that some faceless jobsworth will just dismiss me. £500 is the minimum fee that bona vacantia charge when dealing with land apparently, I wonder where this land is? considering my 33m2 that is no use to anyone, in a backwater of a northen village is supposedly worth £1500.

DVardysShadow

???? You need a grant of easement? Surely, you as land owner must give the easement? Or indeed, there may be an easement in place from the time of development. The price quoted for this seems too high.

The 33m2 is of use to you. Its value is the value of not having your gable end exposed. Can you put a value on that? Personally, I could look at a house with and without and see a potential £5000 difference in value quite easily. You need to look at it in the same way and offer whatever is left over after your expenses are covered. Or do the works to divert the footpath and go down the adverse possession path

k3v

The reason for the grant of easement is that if/when i erect a new fence then i will be fencing in an area of footpath that has the cables under it. I cant have a stopping up order to move the path until i have the grant of easement and i cant have a grant of easement until i am the owner of the land. I have spoke to national grids solicitors on numerous occasions to see if there is any way of drawing up a contract without it being a grant of easement but they arent interested. One of them did admit that the fee was a rip off though.

This is going to cost me around £6000 when done i think based on the latest figures. This is on a semi house valued around £120k.

I am undecided on this now but my girlfriend is against the idea now that the costs have escalated.
Before i go back to bona vacantia i possibly got fobbed off, i thought i would ask on here. If i can get the land costs down from £2800 to £2000 then I think i will procede if not then ill just have to call it a day....... 2.5 years after first enquiring about moving the path! I get the feeling though that this is a take it or leave it deal. On a side note the same letter that gives me the price also informs me that if i pull out now i am liable for the valuers fees. This is news to me as when i enquired verbally at the start of all this there would be no costs to me if the land value was more than i could afford.

Thanks for your replies

DVardysShadow

k3v wrote: »

The reason for the grant of easement is that if/when i erect a new fence then i will be fencing in an area of footpath that has the cables under it. I cant have a stopping up order to move the path until i have the grant of easement and i cant have a grant of easement until i am the owner of the land. I have spoke to national grids solicitors on numerous occasions to see if there is any way of drawing up a contract without it being a grant of easement but they arent interested. One of them did admit that the fee was a rip off though.

That still sounds the wrong way around. NG do not own the land. You want to enclose it as and when you own it. I cannot see that they have rights to stop you enclosing it - only that they have rights to stop you stopping up the footpath. I can see that they would want an easement from you for the cable before they consent to the footpath being stopped.

k3v wrote: »

This is going to cost me around £6000 when done i think based on the latest figures. This is on a semi house valued around £120k.

I am undecided on this now but my girlfriend is against the idea now that the costs have escalated.
Before i go back to bona vacantia i possibly got fobbed off, i thought i would ask on here. If i can get the land costs down from £2800 to £2000 then I think i will procede if not then ill just have to call it a day....... 2.5 years after first enquiring about moving the path! I get the feeling though that this is a take it or leave it deal. On a side note the same letter that gives me the price also informs me that if i pull out now i am liable for the valuers fees. This is news to me as when i enquired verbally at the start of all this there would be no costs to me if the land value was more than i could afford.

Thanks for your replies

Then offer £1800, leaving £200 in hand. And make it plain that you accept no responsibility for valuers fees if you do offer.

But against the value of the house, I think that my £5000 may be optimistic.

k3v

The footpath is the area of land i want to enclose ,this is where the cable is and this is why I cant stop up the land till i give them rights of access..... i think!

I figured it would add £2-3k more to the house value as it will invrease the bak garden by around 15%.

im going to make them a formal offer next week. I spoke to the chap today he said they will consider all offers and he hinted that if i make a lower offer that he would have to go back to the valuer and this would cost me more! frustrating! He also said again that if we cannot reach an agreement then i woould still have to pay the £800 valuation fee.

DVardysShadow

k3v wrote: »

.

im going to make them a formal offer next week. I spoke to the chap today he said they will consider all offers and he hinted that if i make a lower offer that he would have to go back to the valuer and this would cost me more! frustrating! He also said again that if we cannot reach an agreement then i woould still have to pay the £800 valuation fee.

Yes, make an offer. As for the valuation fee, make your offer inclusive of all their costs. I assume you have not agreed to anything yet which makes you liable for the valuation.