Value of garden land?

mapcr77

Hello,
I know there have been questions like these before but cannot find any recent threads.
I have a small terraced house and my garden backs onto other people's gardens that sit perpendicularly to ours. They are elderly and other neighbours tell us they struggled to sell their house before as buyers were put off by their big garden. So I'm toying with the idea of offering to buy the last 4 meters or so of their garden (the strip that borders with hours). Not sure how wide their plot is, I reckon about 6 m.


I don't think it would impact massively on the value of either house, I just would like a slightly bigger garden.


How much can I expect to pay on fees and what is a fair offer for such a space?


Thanks

Dan-Dan

mapcr77 wrote: »

Hello,
I know there have been questions like these before but cannot find any recent threads.
I have a small terraced house and my garden backs onto other people's gardens that sit perpendicularly to ours. They are elderly and other neighbours tell us they struggled to sell their house before as buyers were put off by their big garden. So I'm toying with the idea of offering to buy the last 4 meters or so of their garden (the strip that borders with hours). Not sure how wide their plot is, I reckon about 6 m.


I don't think it would impact massively on the value of either house, I just would like a slightly bigger garden.


How much can I expect to pay on fees and what is a fair offer for such a space?


Thanks

Really ?

Sounds like absolute tosh :rotfl:

Hoploz

Presumably it would vary due to local land prices!

I have one point of reference for you. Here in a pricey part of Surrey my friend has just bought a section of woodland from the local landowner to enlarge her garden. Area approx 15m wide by 15m deep. He charged her about 20k and she had to pay all the legal costs as well.

I remember her saying that the solicitor dealing with it thought the land was overpriced hugely and should have been a tenth of what she had to pay. However it was worth it as she had a tiny garden on a big house and now she has a garden more in-keeping, so it has added to the value of her house. (It would have been pretty hard to sell as it was before - huge extended house with tiny garden not ideal)

Mallotum_X

With no access, the land is of no value to anyone other than the neighbours that it borders. Its therefore for you to think how much this is worth to you.

I bought a part of a neighbours garden 5 years ago - 67feet long by 19 feet wide - roughly half of the neighbours garden attached to a 2 bed terrace. I offered an initial 3k and it was accepted, i had expected to be asked for more.

Neighbour didn't want to spend time cutting the grass and was happy with some extra "free" money for something that he saw as worthless. He had no mortgage so it was simple.

Davesnave

I sold a piece of garden land to owners of 4 adjoining, reasonably expensive properties with only 15' or so of garden.

They had it valued as 'garden land.'

I wasn't interested in the price of garden land, but based my price on the likely uplift in value for these houses, minus an allowance for the sheer hassle of reinstating it (I'd laid a rather large amount of concrete!) and the legal costs, which they had to pay.

They didn't like my price and pointed out, as above, that no one else would pay that much. I pointed out no one else could sell it to them!

In the end they came round to the idea that my price was fair.

Land is worth whatever you'll pay for it, bearing in mind uplift in value and utility. I think it cost my neighbours about £8k each on houses worth IRO £300k. Bearing in mind house price inflation since then and a garden now twice the size, I think they did well.

Davesnave

Hoploz wrote: »

I have one point of reference for you. Here in a pricey part of Surrey my friend has just bought a section of woodland from the local landowner to enlarge her garden.

Don't shout that too loudly! Assuming no planning permission was applied for and granted, that was a change of use.

We get away with that sort of thing in deepest Westcountryshire, but in Surrey.......:eek:

There are ways around the problem, of course.;)

moneyistooshorttomention

That's the $64,000 question - ie would the land-owner charge you a fair price OR a "because I can try-on" type price?

It's a judgement call and you are the one who can suss out what the neighbour is like as to which one of those two price levels it would most likely be and there probably will be a big difference between "fair" and "because I can".

eddddy

As Davesnave says, the 'scientific' way of valuing land in these circumstances is to look at the resulting increase/decrease in property values.

For example, if selling the land means:
- The neighbour's property is devalued by £5k, and
- Your property increases in value by £10k

... the price should be somewhere between £5k and £10k.


(In Hoploz's friend's case - perhaps selling the land devalued the seller's land by £1k, but increased the buyer's house value by £30k.

So a £20k price tag might be realistic.)

mapcr77

Thanks to all for your responses. Hard to tell how much the value of either house would change, mine is a small terrace, theirs is a more modern semidetached but with odd access. In other words, they are not "family" homes. How much roughly is the cost of the legal fees?
Thanks again!

TBeckett100

When we were buying we had the valuation done assuming we have 100ft of garden. When it came to the conveyance, 1/2 the garden was unregistered so I had to go back to the surveyor to confirm the value assuming the titled part of the garden. He said there would be no difference as the land isn't worth much (no access etc)