Buying Garden Land from a neighbour

dfarry

Hi, our garden is a quite irregular shape, as is our neighbours.

There is a long relatively narrow area, at a guess 3-4 metres wide by about 6 metres that is adjacent to our garden.  This shape narrows our garden and offers little useful space for our neighbour (in relation to the rest of his garden and proximity to his home).

But this piece of land also has a very mature 12 metre tall tree in the middle of it.  It's an ugly scruff tree, the leaves are of poor health and quality in my opinion.

This tree is a nuisance to us and our neighbour, prior to our neighbour moving in the tree was left by the then owner to grow uncontrollably, the canopy is so large that squirrels would jump off the tree onto our TV aerial, then they got into our roof and caused a fair bit of damage.  As you can gather from this the tree is just 5 metres from the edge of our home, it's really to near and too big.

The current neighbour is reasonable, responsible and helpful, between us we looked to get the tree felled but as the tree has a preservation order on it, our council refused and instead said it should just have the canopy reduced.

So coming back to the land, whilst I am not keen to take on ownership of the tree, I would be able to manage it better especially considering it's proximity to our home.  Maybe in time it could be felled but for the time being, I think regular reduction will be needed.

This piece of land would still give us some useful space, even with the tree in position.  So I am open to buying it and my neighbour seems willing entertain selling it.

He contacted a local land valuation company and they wouldn't even come out to look out the land without first being paid £1000..... is that standard practice?

I personally wouldn't be willing to pay much for the land because of the impact and ongoing cost of the tree, but I don't want either my neighbour, me or us jointly to pay £1000 to simply be told a valuation that neither of us are happy with.

So other than trying to find other land valuation agents, or perhaps arranging a sale based on a percentage of the final value, I'm not sure how we could progress this plan.

Also I'd welcome any advice on the legal aspects of such a sale.

Considering the impact of the tree would I be better to run a mile and leave my neighbour to foot the bill of any tree care or subsequent damage to our home?

Many thanks

eddddy

You don't really need a valuer - you just need to agree a price with your neighbour.


FWIW, if you did get a valuer, they'd probably value the land like this:

• How much will the extra land add to the value of your house (for the sake of argument, let's say £8k)

• How much will the loss of the land reduce the value of the neighbour's house (let's say £5k)

So a fair price would be £6.5k - i.e. You each make a gain of £1.5k on the deal.


But in reality, a small strip of land might make no difference to the value of your house or to the value of your neighbour's house. In that case, in theory, the land's value is £0.


But if owning that piece of land will improve the quality of your life - you have to decide how much that improved quality of life is worth in money terms. And that will be the max price you'd pay.

(And a valuer can't really measure how much the quality of your life will improve.)

Hoenir

Does your neighbour have a mortgage? 

Is the tree subject to a TPO? 

GDB2222

Hoenir said:

Does your neighbour have a mortgage? 

Is the tree subject to a TPO? 

The OP mentions a TPO. 

Albermarle

There is a long relatively narrow area, at a guess 3-4 metres wide by about 6 metres 

6M is not very long, is that a typo?

dfarry

Hi everyone, appreciate your comments, thank you.

The following image may give you a better idea of what I am talking about, The yellow boundary is my neighbours land, my home is the bottom right property.  The red line would be the cut-off point and the tree (which does have a TPO) is marked with the large red dot.

Just to complicate things, we also have a drain that runs at the side of our home (which was built around 1960).  As I understand it the drain was extended around 20 years ago to provide a drain to the two house on the left.  We've lived in the home since 2009 so it's not exactly clear.

I might be worrying about nothing but the main trunk of the tree is only about 1.5 metres away from where this drain must run.  I'm assuming that this would have been taken into account when the drain was extended, but the tree would have been much small back then.

As you can the angle of my garden more naturally follows along into the strip of land.  I have no idea why it is like this, except to say my home was once a caretakers house and the strange shape may have been dictated originally by the placement of portacabin type classrooms on the land where the house have been for the last 20 years.  I believe (looking at old maps that there was a track/path in a left to right diagonal around the back of my home.



This is a drone shot from a different angle, you can more clearly see the canopy of the tree:



And some photos of the tree, the ivy climbing up has been removed by my neighbour.

dfarry

Albermarle said:

There is a long relatively narrow area, at a guess 3-4 metres wide by about 6 metres 

6M is not very long, is that a typo?

It might be 7-8 metres but I don't think anymore.

Thanks

dfarry

eddddy said:

You don't really need a valuer - you just need to agree a price with your neighbour.


FWIW, if you did get a valuer, they'd probably value the land like this:

• How much will the extra land add to the value of your house (for the sake of argument, let's say £8k)

• How much will the loss of the land reduce the value of the neighbour's house (let's say £5k)

So a fair price would be £6.5k - i.e. You each make a gain of £1.5k on the deal.


But in reality, a small strip of land might make no difference to the value of your house or to the value of your neighbour's house. In that case, in theory, the land's value is £0.


But if owning that piece of land will improve the quality of your life - you have to decide how much that improved quality of life is worth in money terms. And that will be the max price you'd pay.

(And a valuer can't really measure how much the quality of your life will improve.)

Thanks Eddddy, I'd be interested for your opinions, now I have added some pictures.

There could be an argument that the transfer of land could benefit both financially.

From my neighbours perspective, a more regular shaped garden might make it more saleable, especially not having to have responsibility for the tree.

For us we could make use of the strip if it became part of out enlarged garden, but then we are taking on the responsibility for the tree, so it's a trick one.

dfarry

Hoenir said:

Does your neighbour have a mortgage? 

Is the tree subject to a TPO? 

Good point re. the mortgage, I doubt it but I'm not sure.

I do have a mortgage, albeit a small one.

And yes it has a TPO..... there is also another larger tree in my neighbours garden which also have a TPO.  I have two holm oaks in the front of our garden/drive which have TPO's..... our council loves throwing down TPO's on trees!

NameUnavailable

TPO's are clearly necessary as if you had your way you'd be chopping the tree down, probably some of the others too!

Is £1K really too much to pay given the overall scheme of things here? How else will you decide on what's a fair value? (unless your neighbour doesn't want anything for the land or you make an offer of what you're prepared to pay and see what they say?).

Bearing in mind the other costs involved here - legal fees for the transaction (even if sold or £0), cost of a new fence (presumably you would need to cover that as part of the transaction) and costs for the tree pruning, perhaps charges for the mortgage co, I expect you're already looking at maybe £5K?

dfarry

Well £1000 split 50:50 wouldn't be too much of a problem, if the valuation was acceptable/realistic.

As others have suggested I'm not sure what detailed work would be necessary to value the land as it's probably only worth what someone is prepared to pay.

That said your suggestion of £5K is probably not far off what I think is reasonable/realistic taking into account all the likely costs