Buying Land

odannyboy

As the population of the u.k is ever growing, more housing will have to be built and land is obviously needed to do this. With this in mind I have been recently looking into buying land in the England, to potential sell for profit in the future. Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of doing this?

Have a limit of about 20 K to spend i,m already aware of afew plots in this range.

GDB2222

20k - plots with planning permission?

PP only lasts a few years - 3? Then you have to start again

odannyboy

None of the plots for 20k have p.p, does the amount of time the p.p last's vary from plot to plot or council to council? or is it a set period of time?

Anymore opinion on land investment would be appreciated?

zzzLazyDaisy

Lots of plots of land simply would not get PP, that is why they are stood vacant and have not already been snapped up by a developer.

There can be all sorts of reasons why PP is refused.

I have a friend who has a plot of land beside his house, with road frontage, access to all utilities, in a residential road. Wanted to put a small house on it. Refused because, where he is, there is a minimum footage for building land, and his plot falls a few feet short. If he could get an extra one foot strip down one side, he could get PP. Not surprisingly, his neighbour isn't interested in selling him a foot off his driveway.

Of course, the rules may change as housing needs increase. That is what my friend is hoping for. But you are taking a chance on locking up your money for years to come.

Debt_Free_Chick

odannyboy wrote:

None of the plots for 20k have p.p, does the amount of time the p.p last's vary from plot to plot or council to council? or is it a set period of time?

Anymore opinion on land investment would be appreciated?

For detailed PP, you must begin the development within five years from the date the permission was granted. Local authorities can vary this, but the time limit must be appropriate to the size & nature of the development. For outline PP, the limit is three years. There are plans to amend this - details here.

Provided the development begins - and that can just be digging the footing, I think (fairly certain) that you can take as long as you like to complete it. Though you may get flack from the Local Authority if there is constant disturbance whilst the property is being developed.

If you are seriously looking at land with no PP with a view to getting PP, you really must consult the Local Authority's planning strategy for the area in which you are buying. This will clearly state the types of development that the local planning officer will consider favourably and those that are likely to be unfavourable.

Don't buy land blind! In rural areas, you are unlikely to get PP for change of use of equestrian, agricultural and amenity land, UNLESS the local planning strategy seeks to decrease green belt and allow development. In that case, you are likely to find that the demand is for affordable housing - not a five bed luxury exec home with swimming pool!

Seriously, that would reduce your potential for profit.

HTH

GDB2222

odannyboy wrote:

None of the plots for 20k have p.p, does the amount of time the p.p last's vary from plot to plot or council to council? or is it a set period of time?

Anymore opinion on land investment would be appreciated?

Why do you think these might be worth £20k? Without PP most small plots of land are more or less worthless.

One trick I have seen is where a company buys say a 10 acre field for £20k (that is the price of agricultural land). It then divides it into maybe 100 'plots' and sells these off at £20k each. One such scheme I saw had elaborate plans drawn up with roads, drainage, etc. Of course, all this infrastructure costs a fortune, and there was no indication of who would pay for it, even if PP were available, which is unlikely.

odannyboy

Thanks for that advice, it seems before buying anywhere it's vital to be aware of the local authority's planning strategy.

However I know that someone called Baron Deschauer has been buying up lots of agricultural land in the hope that in the future the need for housing will be such that council's will grant him planning permission. I agree that this a gamble, and one that someone with his money can prob take, but I feel there could be something in the idea? (even on a smaller scale).

Is anyone aware of the practical process of buying land? I.E contact landowner, undertake solicters search/ land survey ?

thanks for advice and opinion.

micheleen

Buying up agricultural land in the hope you'll get lucky is a long term gamble. If there was any slight prospect of building in the reasonably near future developers would already be talking to the landowner(s) about option payments.

lush_walrus

To find out what angle local councils and indeed government policy is doing with regards to changing use etc you need to look at the UDP.

To be honest, if you have absolutely no knowledge of development, process etc I would avoid buying land like the plague.

What will or wont get PP and change of use is an ever changing thing, but you really need to understand where the current thinking is coming from to be able to gage anywhere near whether a plot is worth investing in. Not only are the government at the moment pushing for new housing to be built, they are still pushing for Brownfield sites to be developed, and there are certain types of agriculture that they are pushing forward and industry.

I dont want to sound offensive, but I dont think it is anywhere near wise to buy land with your level of knowledge. Developers do not randomly buy anything on the speculation that a countrywide trend is going in a certain direction.

My advise would be start to learn very fast or else avoid like the plague. And if you are thinking of learning fast, the things you need to be concerned with are Gordon Brown's plans ie things like the M11 corridor and his directional demands for higher density housing in certain key areas (this will give you a slight insight into what the government want to acheive). Then after you are armed with all of the government plans you then need to look into the probability of future thinking ie how far have the plans progressed, what will the next government push towards, what are the other parties responding to at the moment with regards to development.

Once you have got an idea of government direction then you need to know the area you are planning to buy, what are the local councils plans/priorities? Look at the UDP and understand what they are really saying, who are the local action groups, what kind of pull do they have against or for development? Etc etc, despite popular belief developers do not randomly buy ANYTHING, everything is calculated to a tee, including many many spreadsheet predicting growth of income, risk analysis.

I work a lot with developers on both sides of my work (architect & EA) and really if you are going to move into their turf on any form of level, you need to know your stuff, not just go on a flakey prediction about a lack of housing, its far far more complex than that if you want to make any money from the land.

Good luck

lush_walrus

Sorry I forgot to say, its not planning permission you need to worry about, if you find the land, find yourself a good architect who has a good history of getting permission granted locally and that will 99% of the time get you what you want.

The thing you really need to be wary of is Change of Use, if you don't get that the land will be worth give or take a few thousand, exactly the same indefinately (unless of course government grants become available again). But if you do manage to get change of use, then you will be able to off load the site onto a developer straight away, and let them worry about construction, and getting PP. Thats what many landowners actually do!

GDB2222

odannyboy wrote:

Thanks for that advice, it seems before buying anywhere it's vital to be aware of the local authority's planning strategy.

However I know that someone called Baron Deschauer has been buying up lots of agricultural land in the hope that in the future the need for housing will be such that council's will grant him planning permission. I agree that this a gamble, and one that someone with his money can prob take, but I feel there could be something in the idea? (even on a smaller scale).

Is anyone aware of the practical process of buying land? I.E contact landowner, undertake solicters search/ land survey ?

thanks for advice and opinion.

OK, so you want to buy a field. What are you going to do with ite for the probably long period of time until you get change of use? Let it to a local farmer? In that case, you need to avoid creating an agricultural tenancy.

Small fields (say 5 acres) may be hard to get and may be at a premium price in some areas.

Woodland might be a better bet.