building works near recently bought house 12 October 2018 at 9:22AM edited 30 November -1 at 1:00AM in House Buying, Renting & Selling 11 replies 1K views

Nevis13

just wanted to see if anyone has any advice or experience with the following:
purchased a house little over 2 years ago. this year building work has begun on 16 houses aproximately just over 100 meters or so on the area of land behind my home. this has been on the cards since before i purchased the house but im 100% confident it wasnt brought up during the sale. it has been suggested that i could claim as the solicitors should of told us that this may happen. would it be worth trying to claim compensation as one of the reasons we bought the house in the firstplace was because it was in a quiet, peaceful area and could it come to anything? thankyou

Doozergirl

They're wrong.

The searches on your house only check your land. If you want to check planning applications around the house - like on a nice empty patch of land, you either ask for an additional search or you get on the planning portal of your local authority and run a map search around the postcode.

Even if they should have told you (which they shouldn't) you can't have compensation because you haven't actually suffered a loss. Your house will be worth whatever it would have been without the houses 100 metres away and you can't claim for an inconvenience.

Take your legal advice from people who don't think there's compensation around every corner.

davidmcn

And of course, even there hadn't been a planning application before you bought, there could have been one the day after you bought, leaving you in exactly the same position. You should always assume that nice big empty bits of land next to residential areas will eventually be developed.

diggingdude

Did you check local planning?

Mgman1965

Never buy a house for the view, unless its a conservation area or the edge of a cliff looking over the sea.


As the OP and others have found out, that gorgeous view over open rolling countryside that sold you the house could soon be a housing estate or giant warehouses.

Nevis13

being our first house purchase we didnt know/think to check local planning and werent advised to and it looks like the solicitors didnt either by the sounds of it they didnt have to. such a shame as lovely area of land to walk dogs in a quiet village.

Davesnave

Nobody who buys your house at some time in the future will have seen the view you've had, so they won't miss it.

I sold a small bungalow in 2006 which had enjoyed a view across acres of MoD land for 20 years , but by the time I was ready to market, Charles Church had built an estate next door.

I still broke the ceiling price for the road. As Doozergirl says, compensation isn't on the cards or relevant. For all we know, building in the area indicates high demand and increasing prices, as it did with the property I disposed of.


Edit: Quiet villages are just the ticket for some folks, but with no development they can be a little too quiet. I was at a meeting in our village two nights ago, because something I'm involved with has folded due to there being not enough younger people to support it. We've lost our school, our PO, and almost lost the pub too. The countryside is lovely, but it can't just become a museum full of old relics like me!

societys_child

Nevis13 wrote: »

such a shame as lovely area of land to walk dogs in a quiet village.

Looking at it from the land owners point of view, do you think they were happy to provide a free dog walking area

ed67812

You just cannot buy a house for the view unless you are buying the land that makes the view. You felt development was on the cards and If everyone felt that and considered their offers according to the possibility of a new build at the end of the garden, could it be that you actually got a bargain as now that they have built, a 100m gap has been left?

SG27

I dont think you have any chance of a claim but when I bought my house 2 months ago one of the searches showed up a plannimg application for 145 houses about 500m away. I already knew about it anyway.

lookstraightahead

Dog walking land makes me want to wear my wellies