Group of people looking to buy properties on shared land - what would this be called?

lmdp

Odd question, hope it makes sense.

A few us me and my friends have this idea of all living in our houses, but on, and sharing a piece of land.

I guess sort of like communal living except having our own properties.

However I never know what to search when beginning to look at properties as it isn't a normal arrangement.

The only thing I have found is Holiday Complex's up for sale, where there is normally a house, and then holiday cottages sold alongside it on land.

Can anyone advise or know of a website/ way to word what I am looking for.

I appreciate it isn't the norm!

user1977

Do you mean you will exclusively each own your own plot but there'll be other communally-owned land? I'm not sure how different it is in principle from any other estate (other than you know who else will be your neighbours!).

lmdp

Yes I think that is what I mean.

We'd all like to own our own properties, but share the land, or I suppose equally divide the land up somehow.

MultiFuelBurner

Maybe a cult? 

That aside it may be worth taking legal advice rather than "forum no legal" advice.

lincroft1710

Commune?   .

lmdp

Obviously I would get legal advise when it comes time to buy, I'm just looking for the name of what I need to look for

Continental

Consortium is the word I think you’re looking for!

Section62

"Difficult" ?

To have a shared garden you'd need 'x' properties with shared boundaries.

The chances of being able to buy neighbouring properties in anything other than quite a long timeframe can't be good, unless there was something wrong with the area and people wanted to move away in a hurry, or if you and your friends had enough cash to make it worth people's while to sell to you and move away.

Properties with shared boundaries do come up for sale in new developments so you could collectively approach a developer, but I think what you want to do might be viewed as sufficiently unusual that most developers would have concerns about the impact of what you are doing on the saleability of other properties in the development... in other words you'd probably need to find a new development with a close match to the number of houses to meet your needs.

The alternative would be to buy you own land as a building plot for the 'x' houses you want, and treat it as a form of self-build.  There's a possibility you might be able to persuade the planners to accept some compromises (e.g. the shared garden being smaller than the sum of individual gardens) but they will probably still be thinking about what happens if the experiment goes wrong and each property owner ends up wanting their own private space.

What you are talking about is close to what happens in many cases with private flats or apartments... so not totally unheard of.

theoretica

You get something a bit similar with flats where the various leaseholders each own a share of the freehold.  One option I can think of would be to find a new build project of the right size and see if the developer would sell the whole thing to you and your friends.

lmdp

Haha the other thing I wondered (and obviously will seek legal advice) would be to buy a holiday complex, I saw one for sale which had a house, and then several holiday cottages on it, and either see if it is possible to sell the cottages to friends, or rent them. 

Definitely worth thinking about. 

Thanks!

Section62

lmdp said:

Haha the other thing I wondered (and obviously will seek legal advice) would be to buy a holiday complex, I saw one for sale which had a house, and then several holiday cottages on it, and either see if it is possible to sell the cottages to friends, or rent them. 

If it has been developed for the purpose (or converted) then it is possible there will be planning restrictions on using them for anything other than holiday lets. (i.e. not full-time single-family occupation)