To not declare knowledge of planned estate

[Wouldthisbefraud]

Selling house. An estate is being planned behind it. I’ve just been putting the legal
pack together and it asks if I have any knowledge of planned development work.

It’s at pre planning stage but is well known. All the neighbours know about it. The neighbours know that I know.

Would I be unreasonable to deny knowledge of it in case it brings the value down? Would it be risky. What would you do?

Searches will flag it. You'll look like a dick and prospective buyers will wonder what else you're hiding.

I really feel for you. That would undoubtedly affect the value of your home if it's a rural location with 900+ houses planned. I would tell the truth, it will come up during searches anyway so you have nothing to gain by lying.

I wonder if you live next door to my Dad 😂

If you don't declare it, any potential buyers putting in an offer banking on a lovely quiet field will probably pull out when they hear there is a planned development. So you'll just have wasted everyone's time and potentially a lot of someone else's money.

It's going to come out at some point, so may as well be up front about it.

Then you would be wise to declare it unless you know for sure they have all been deleted and will never emerge.

Very, very unreasonable. We bought a house in a beautiful rural area a few years ago, mainly for the view of the countryside. The estate agent covered it all up, the searches didn’t pick it up -
aa the local council were covering it up at that time - and 1 year in, our view turned into a hideous concrete jungle and we were devastated.

Please do the right thing.

Definitely tell them. It’s not fair on the buyers, who are presumably buying it because of its rural location.

HOW you know matters - if I hadn't seen something from a formal source then I'd say no.

You'd think that searches would throw up planned development next door. We found to our cost that they didn't. Immediately after moving in, we were told that the residential home next door was going to proceed with a massive extension. Apparently permission had been granted 20 years previously, and the Local Authority's view was that it would still be OK for them to proceed with it.
The extension has taken away our view and reduced the value of our property.
We queried it with our solicitor why the planning permission for work next door hadn't come up on the searches. He said that searches only pertained to the land we were buying. He reckoned that you would specifically have to ask for wider searches for surrounding land if you wanted to know about planning permissions granted for neighbouring properties. We learnt this lesson the hard way.

It'd certainly lose value if I found out you lied. Because you wouldn't be selling it. And I'd make sure your estate agent knew how dishonest you are.

Yes, our solicitor said the same, when we asked about ownership of the strip if undeveloped land behind our last house - she only checked it out after we specifically asked about it. So a naive first time buyer might not think to do that, but it would be really unethical to pretend you didn't know.

We looked at a house years back similar to your situation, fairly ordinary house but the selling point was the fields behind it. It was almost comical, the owner made a great point of telling us it was totally safe from being built on, he knew the farmer and he'd never sell for development. We didn't buy it (it had some very suspicious looking cracks, including one between the house and the built in garage you could have put your hand through!) and lo and behold just a few weeks later the builders moved in and the fields became a housing estate. Presumably that's why he was selling in the first place.

The buyers conveyancing solicitor will pick it up down the line, so no point in lying

You can answer with a statement about what you do know. So you can state that you're not aware of any approved planning permission but buyers should make their own searches

You can say you don’t know, the buyer will get searches done and found out anyhow.

You should tell the truth. It is pointless lying, it creates stress for you and the buyers will find out later - your worst case is a sale falls through, costing you time and effort if not money too.

Ask your agent what the price impact is likely to be. In my town there is no price difference between houses with fields behind and houses in the next street over. People don't like the disruption of development whilst it is happening so that may deter some buyers.

As others have said, it will be revealed in the searches. Maybe you'll have to drop your price.

It’s currently a field and the rural location is its biggest selling point. I’m worried it will lose value

Sorry OP but of course it's going to lose value. No point in fighting that tbh and pointless to lie about it.

Good for you, OP - definitely stand your ground and don't let all these unscrupulous MNers lead you astray!

Find out who the developer is and part ex the house to them for a nice new build on the edge of the development with the best view.

Then sell that one when it's built.

You're welcome. My fee is 5%.

Do searches cover adjacent land or just the land in the search? As a planning officer I was asked to do mineral searches once. I flagged an extant quarry consent for the field opposite the property in question. The authority legal team sent it back because I should only comment on the land I was asked about, not land nearby.

It may be a peculiarity of minerals searches or a quirk of 25 years ago...

Are you moving because you of said development?

The searches will show it so you can put something non-committal if you want to.

My experience (as detailed in my post above) was that searches do not cover adjacent land, unless the buyer specifically requests it.

It may even be thought that it is the reason you wish to sell.If it is then you have to accept that you may we have to take the hit on the value. You are suggesting it is rural and peaceful but it is not going to be. You may have to wait until the houses are built and people can see exactly how they affect your property before uou can actually get a buyer.

You have to be truthful. A lot of people won’t care, honestly. When we sold our old house, we knew that our next door neighbour had planning permission for a two storey extension so we had to declare it on the form. We put the minimum that we had to put even though it was obvious to us it would make the patio very shady. However, all the form asked was whether we knew of any upcoming works (or words to that effect) so we fulfilled the legal requirements and there couldn’t be any comeback on us 🤷‍♀️