Farm land

chen234

I am looking to lease some farm land so I can extend my garden and have no idea about how much I should be prepared to pay, or whether there are any risks to leasing agricultural land for personal use? 

Any help would be much appreciated 😊

Section62

chen234 said:

I am looking to lease some farm land so I can extend my garden and have no idea about how much I should be prepared to pay, or whether there are any risks to leasing agricultural land for personal use? 

Any help would be much appreciated 😊

If the use you want to put the land to isn't agricultural then you'd need to get planning consent for change of use - and the land owner is unlikely to be happy with that if you only want to lease or rent it.

Have you already established that the land owner is willing to let you rent/buy the land?

What exactly are you planning to do with the land, and why 'lease' rather than buying outright?

user1977

And in any event the price (whether for agricultural or garden use) is going to largely depend on where it is. May be tricky to put a price on what is (presumably) an odd corner of a field which nobody else would want to lease/buy.

chen234

Section62 said:

chen234 said:

I am looking to lease some farm land so I can extend my garden and have no idea about how much I should be prepared to pay, or whether there are any risks to leasing agricultural land for personal use? 

Any help would be much appreciated 😊

If the use you want to put the land to isn't agricultural then you'd need to get planning consent for change of use - and the land owner is unlikely to be happy with that if you only want to lease or rent it.

Have you already established that the land owner is willing to let you rent/buy the land?

What exactly are you planning to do with the land, and why 'lease' rather than buying outright?

My garden backs onto a 6 acre field. There is a tin sheep shed on the back of my neighbours garden which the farmer has claimed he will convert into a house at some point, and there is a risk he could sell the land to developers. My neighbours (4 of us) are collectively proposing to lease the land so we can
1) extend our gardens 
2) remove sheep shed to mitigate risk of it being developed
3) by owning / leasing some of the land it will secure a bigger area should the field be sold at some point to be developed on

The farmer will not allow us to buy the land, he has proposed we lease for 300 years. And the extra land will extend the garden by up to 5 metres 

We intend to get planning consent to change it from agricultural which the farmer is happy with. 

We have been given a price which seems excessive to say the least but I don’t know how much is a reasonable price….

chen234

user1977 said:

And in any event the price (whether for agricultural or garden use) is going to largely depend on where it is. May be tricky to put a price on what is (presumably) an odd corner of a field which nobody else would want to lease/buy.

It is the boundary from my garden into a 6 acre field

Section62

chen234 said:

We have been given a price which seems excessive to say the least but I don’t know how much is a reasonable price….

A 300 year lease on land with development potential is not going to be cheap.  In practice you and your neighbours are buying a right to not have the land developed for 300 years, your use of it as garden is effectively incidental to that.

canaldumidi

Section62 said:

chen234 said:

We have been given a price which seems excessive to say the least but I don’t know how much is a reasonable price….

A 300 year lease on land with development potential is not going to be cheap.  In practice you and your neighbours are buying a right to not have the land developed for 300 years, your use of it as garden is effectively incidental to that.

Indeed.

Why should the farmer agree to lease it to you for peanuts when he can sell it to a developer for a small fortune......?

It's not as if land or property has some kind government-fixed price per acre. Its value is simply a reflection of how much others are willing to pay, be that you and your neighbours, or a notional developer with whom you are effectively competing.

lincroft1710

You should be prepared to pay what the farmer asks, you are in a poor position to negotiate.

TripleH

Sadly the farmer will get more money converting that land into land to build on and selling it than leasing it to you and your neighbours.

We're lucky in that it appears near impossible for our house to be overlooked. That's because our house is built on a hill and the slope above our house is our garden. There are houses above but we can't see them because of the slope.

The only way you guarantee a 'beautiful view' is to own the land. Even if the existing land owner has no plans for development, it doesn't mean their circumstances won't change or the parties inheriting the land won't put it to other use.

SootySweep1

Hi
If you look at agricultural land prices they are low but have a look at residential land prices & totally different kettle of fish.

They often talk about marriage values. How much will the extra garden add to the value of your house ?

Jen

SarahB16

chen234 said:

We have been given a price which seems excessive to say the least but I don’t know how much is a reasonable price….

If you think planning permission is likely on this land then to help you think about what is a reasonable price to pay you need to look at it as though instead of this land being leased to you the farmer decided to sell it to a residential developer to build homes on.  

You and your neighbours leasing this land stops a developer from purchasing this land to build additional homes.    

The value of the lease would be approximately 16.6% of the total sales value of the homes which could be built on the land.  

For example, if four houses could be built on this land and they would collectively have a market value of £2m then c.£333k would be a reasonable amount for the farmer to charge you.  

Of course if you think the total sales value of the homes that could be built there (which you wish to prevent) would be nearer to £1m then the amount which would be reasonable to pay for the lease would be c.£167k.   

You need to look at this through the eyes of the farmer and what amount he could get for this land if he were to sell it for residential use.