How much can a garden increase the value of your property?

Sapphire

Wonderful ideas! Great for the environment. Typical of a selfish society that lives to satisfy only its immediate gains.

So very attractive, too!

'(add decking and pave over the front to add off street parking - Phil Spencer, 2010)'

'Consider your buyers when making over the rear garden. Add parking to front. Our property.'

onlyroz

Sapphire wrote: »

Wonderful ideas! Great for the environment. Typical of a selfish society that lives to satisfy only its immediate gains.

So very attractive, too!

'(add decking and pave over the front to add off street parking - Phil Spencer, 2010)'

'Consider your buyers when making over the rear garden. Add parking to front. Our property.'

We had a dropped curb application refused by the council on grounds of "highway safety" despite around half the properties on the same road having a dropped curb.

System

There are two questions here. The OP title seemed to be asking whether having a garden, or what size, influenced the house's desirability.
The second question is does improving a garden enhance the value?

Generally I think people expext a house to have a size of garden appropriate to its size. A large country house won't sell if all its garden has been sold off for affordable housing. But a small flat doesn't need a patch of garden 100 yards away.

Some people are gardeners, others want lots of space to park multiple family cars. Improving either facility will reduce appeal to the other kind.

vivatifosi

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

There are two questions here. The OP title seemed to be asking whether having a garden, or what size, influenced the house's desirability.
The second question is does improving a garden enhance the value?

Generally I think people expext a house to have a size of garden appropriate to its size. A large country house won't sell if all its garden has been sold off for affordable housing. But a small flat doesn't need a patch of garden 100 yards away.

Some people are gardeners, others want lots of space to park multiple family cars. Improving either facility will reduce appeal to the other kind.

I think there are three main points from the hyperlinks I posted. The first, as you mentioned, is that the size has to be relevant to the house. The second is that the design of the garden has to be relevant to the most likely future user... so if it is going to be a family with kids then having an English country garden with complex flower beds interspersed probably isn't the way forward. The third is that sometimes you have to balance other needs such as parking or additional internal space which take away from garden size, but if you do that, you need to also consider the impact on points 1 and 2.

padington

It depends where the house is, in london a slightly larger garden that looks like a slice of paradise over a slightly smaller concret yard can push a well done up house to its top end brackets which can be a considerable mark up.

My place has gone up from 290 - 450k in two and half years partly because of the magical garden made from a concrete yard, whilst pushing out into a bit of no mans land at the back and giving the ugly flat roof a roof terrace make over, gave it that 'prime' feeling.

Ps my garden is very low maintenance still but gets the wow factor and exudes an out doors life style, which I think is the way to go. Basically creating a new room with seating (hardwood sun loungers and hammocks ) and gatherings around the fire being the central focus.

However having it green enough and wild life friendly to still attract a regular family of woodpeckers in zone 3 also is a great selling point. The trick is to take out the concrete and move in the grass and just a few flower bed but give the grass area great drainage and use an anti squirrel bird feeder thats ALWAYS topped up with meal worm, suet and nuts.

... Oh and being meticulous to buy somewhere backing on to a small wood.

MrRee_2

onlyroz wrote: »

We had a dropped curb application refused by the council on grounds of "highway safety" despite around half the properties on the same road having a dropped curb.

Buy a couple of arris style blocks of wood - 2 tyre widths long - cement them in the gutter ( a car width apart) where you want the dropped kerb ... and there we go.