House purchase - only has half the land advertised

TamTam72

Sorry if this is totally the wrong type of forum to post this question.

I am in the process of buying a property in Norfolk, and the Estate Agent particulars say it is set in approx 2 acres (sts) and the vendor also told us it was about a 2 acre plot. We never questioned this as we don't know what an acre looks like, and the garden is plenty big enough! Anyway, we have just found out that in fact the plot is, at the very most, only ONE acre, HALF the amount advertised. Do you think we should be entitled to ask for money off the purchase price? The house is expensive and we assumed that much of this had to do with the amount of land it (supposedly) came with. How would we go about working out how much an acre of land/garden costs to negotitate the purchase price down?

Thanks

BobProperty

Why not (negotiate a reduction for the smaller garden)? It may help to remind the EA of the Property Description (?) Act - can't remember the proper name bu the laws that apply to how EA's describe property for sale.
What I will suggest you check or look into, I think a house with >1 acre of garden has some peculiarities attached to it regarding either PPR tax relief or IHT. It may be worth checking in case you can do something now to mitigate problems later.

prudryden

Is that one acre inclusive of both house and garden?

Debt_Free_Chick

EAs often estimate the size of the land or simply take the vendor's word for it - the vendor may be like you and not know the actual size of the plot!

The EA details should state that the size of the plot is "TBV" or "to be verified" or words to that effect.

The question is, how has it been valued? One would assume that EA valued it as a 2.5 acre plot - as that's what they thought it would be.

Amenity land, which is not quite the same as garden, is approx £3,000 an acre here (E Sussex). This would suggest a reduction of that amount, so why not start with £5k (or even £10k, to be cheeky!) and see where it goes?

Have you checked to see if the land is registered? If it is, you can download the site plan from the land registry and, more often than not, it states the size of the plot - often in hectares. To convert from Hectares to Acres, simply multiply the hectares by 2.47 and to convert from Acres to Hectares multiply the acres by 0.4.

HTH

TamTam72

prudryden wrote:

Is that one acre inclusive of both house and garden?

Yes, that's total plot size.

TamTam72

Debt_Free_Chick wrote:

EAs often estimate the size of the land or simply take the vendor's word for it - the vendor may be like you and not know the actual size of the plot!

The EA details should state that the size of the plot is "TBV" or "to be verified" or words to that effect.

The question is, how has it been valued? One would assume that EA valued it as a 2.5 acre plot - as that's what they thought it would be.

Amenity land, which is not quite the same as garden, is approx £3,000 an acre here (E Sussex). This would suggest a reduction of that amount, so why not start with £5k (or even £10k, to be cheeky!) and see where it goes?

Have you checked to see if the land is registered? If it is, you can download the site plan from the land registry and, more often than not, it states the size of the plot - often in hectares. To convert from Hectares to Acres, simply multiply the hectares by 2.47 and to convert from Acres to Hectares multiply the acres by 0.4.

HTH

Thank you debt-free-chick! I have just downloaded the plan from the Land Regsitry site and it shows the plot is 1.29 acres, but that could hardly be called 'approaching 2 acres' even on a good day with the wind in the right direction! At least now we have 'proof' to take to the EA/vendor on Monday. Your post has proved extremely helpful - thank you!