Splitting land and building another house???

Doozergirl

SquatNow wrote: »

No it's about 2/3 to 3/4 of the price.

Land costs make up the majority of the price of a house.

That's why the governments £60,000 house thing was such a disaster.

They managed to find builders who somehow managed to spend £60,000 on building the houses (yeah, I don't know, maybe they used solid gold fixtures or something) but the final price was over £300k because of the land prices.

It really depends on where you are but the rule of thumb is that it costs 1/3. If the land cost 2/3 to 3/4 of final price then no-one would buy plots at all because you wouldn't be able to build for less than the price of an existing house.

Here it can be half the value of the finished article but we have a new build moratorium and plots with PP are like gold dust.

Doozergirl

To today's OP:

OP the only to make money from your potential plot is to get the PP.

The best way to extract most money is to build the house yourself.
Second to gain PP and split the house and plot into seperate lots.
Third to get the PP for the new house and sell with the existing house.
Fourth to sell with the hope of someone gaining PP - you might get a little extra but nowhere near the full value of a plot.

THe outlay of obtain planning permission - especially outline planning permission is pretty small to the return you would get on it. I would take out a loan to get that PP and the most value from the land.

Suzy_M

Al123 wrote: »

...... I didn't want to incur the expense of getting blueprints drawn up.

In a 'normal' market (whatever that is) - It's worth the expense to get full planning permission as the increase in value will more than cover the initial costs.

planning_officer

vet8 wrote: »

4. Most importantly, understand that planners always say NO. It does not matter what you want to do the first thing the planning officer will say is, "How can I stop this?" They are the most unhelpful people on earth.

We only say 'no' to schemes that do not comply with local and national policies - the planning system is plan-led, not sentiment-led!!

As for being unhelpful, I'm sorry that your experiences have given you this view - I promise all planners are not like that!!

Imp

You can sell subject to planning permission, so you exchange contracts, the buyer then goes away and gets planning permission. If they get planning permission then they are then obliged to buy the land and you are obliged to sell it. If they don't get planning permission then you both walk away.

As for planners, we rang up the planners to see if we could speak to one. They said we should just go in and ask to speak to the duty planner. When we took the day off work and went in they said that they don't give advice if you come in, but that we should fill in a form and they would get back to us. We told them what we had been told on the phone, and grudgingly they sent down the most junior planner in the office with the instructions to say no to everything. Grrrr.

Sonofa

I don't know if this is relevant here but I recall something called an overage provision. Basically when buying land the purchaser has to sign a contract saying that if planning permission is later granted on the land that a percentage of the increased value the planning permission adds to it must then be paid to the original seller.

planning_officer

Imp wrote: »

As for planners, we rang up the planners to see if we could speak to one. They said we should just go in and ask to speak to the duty planner. When we took the day off work and went in they said that they don't give advice if you come in, but that we should fill in a form and they would get back to us. We told them what we had been told on the phone, and grudgingly they sent down the most junior planner in the office with the instructions to say no to everything. Grrrr.

I think whoever you spoke to on the phone should have explained things a bit better - duty planners only really provide very general advice, like pointing someone in the right direction of the relevant policies or advising on how to submit an application. For site-specific advice, like advising whther a particular development is likely to be acceptable, it's just impossible for a duty planner to provide good accurate advice. It needs someone to sit down, look though the planning history, investigate the site constraints, visit the site, etc - that's why people are often advised to write in to the planning dept rather than speak to a duty planner.

Debt_Free_Chick

Sonofa wrote: »

I don't know if this is relevant here but I recall something called an overage provision. Basically when buying land the purchaser has to sign a contract saying that if planning permission is later granted on the land that a percentage of the increased value the planning permission adds to it must then be paid to the original seller.

Although this is a generally a matter for negotiation between the seller & buyer. But you're right, seller could leave all the planning issues to the buyer and have an overage provision. Basically "you do all the leg work and if you get PP I'll have my share of the increase then". Of course, this situation is less attractive to many buyers, compared with buying land that already has all the relevant permissions in place. Not for the faint-hearted!

teabelly

Fee structure has changed so that it is pretty much the same cost to get outline as full PP. It makes more sense to get full PP then someone buying the plot will have the ability to change specific details.

Find an expert. I am just doing similar at the moment as my house has space at the side for a new house. Planners like symmetry and congruence so what ever plan you have you need to make sure the dwelling fits in rather than looking out of place. Gaining PP is harder than it was as there are all sorts of extra hoops like writing environmental impact assessments etc. Gone are the days where you could scribble a box on a piece of paper and say 'can I build a house about here about this big'? Spend time looking through previous applications online and get a feel for what passes and what is turned down. Check the planning meeting minutes and decision notices to find out why a particular case was passed or failed.

Imp

planning_officer wrote: »

I think whoever you spoke to on the phone should have explained things a bit better - duty planners only really provide very general advice, like pointing someone in the right direction of the relevant policies or advising on how to submit an application. For site-specific advice, like advising whther a particular development is likely to be acceptable, it's just impossible for a duty planner to provide good accurate advice. It needs someone to sit down, look though the planning history, investigate the site constraints, visit the site, etc - that's why people are often advised to write in to the planning dept rather than speak to a duty planner.

We have now written to the planners. They have promised to get back to us in six weeks time. (They said 42 days, I am hoping it is 42 real days, not working days)

It would be genuinely quicker to submit a planning application and then withdraw it once the planner has written his report so we can address any issues in his report.