Beginners guide please - how to sell a piece of land

[JustSoYouKnow]

I'm a complete novice so hoping some of you will be kind enough to share your experience and guidance please.
We are considering selling a plot of land to release some funds but I'm not sure how best to approach this. The land has no services and no property on it and no planning permission at the moment. It does have road access separate to our home and we are at the end of a tiny village. I assume it would be wise to get some kind of planning permission to increase the value but is it that straight forward for land with no services? Roughly how much would that cost to do? I believe you can get a kind of outline planning consent which doesn't involve actual house plans just a kind of proposal?
Should we get an estate agent valuation first or go to the council planning department?
Sorry lots of questions! Any pointers would be much appreciated thank you.

Hi Just,

I would definitely talk to an estate agent to ask what properties are most desirable in the area. For example, if its 3 bed houses, then you will know what you need to aim for in terms of planning.

Architects usually charge between 1000-2000 for planning, but it also depends where you are in the country. You may also need to do a survey of the land to figure out measurements and heights and that will be another 300-600. But all in all this will definitely add more value to your land and you will be able to get these investments back after you sell. I would say getting planning will roughly take 4 months if all goes smoothly, but might take longer if there are complications, if your land is in a conservation area for example.

Services dont matter at planning stage.

Hope this helps :-)

Are you assuming that someone will build a roses-round-the-door house on the plot. What if some developer crams 20 starter homes on the site - is that what you want and what will that do to the value of your current house.

How many acres is the plot of land? How close is it to existing built form/the village envelope?
What is your appetite for spec'ing cash on an outline application?

If it's possible to get Outline Planning Permission on the land, this will increase its value very considerably (sometimes by a factor of 10). This increase in value is known as 'Planning gain'.

A decent Planning Consultant will be able to give you a steer quickly and for relatively little cost as to whether it would be likely to get Planning Permission, and for what, and what the costs of making an Outline Application would be.

Message me if you are serious - I am Director of a combined Planning and architectural design practice, specialising in residential Planning.

Thank you so much for your responses: useful info and valid points
To answer some of those points - it's a small plot (no where near an acre), only big enough for one house or a couple of small houses I think and it's beyond our garden so well away from our home. In fact our neighbours are nearer! The village is more of a hamlet.
We realise that we will have to spend some cash to get that additional value but don't want to go too far down this route in case its not appealing as a building plot and increasing the value with planning permission actually puts people off buying!

Ok. Given the scale it's likely worth you getting your own outline consent and selling on. I'd approach the planning authority about holding a pre-app meeting (you will likely have to pay) to discuss the principle of what you are doing. You may want to engage a planning consultant. To do otherwise could lead you to the wrong conclusion as planning authoritites are not known to say yes straight away/without a bit of a game. Assuming you then apply for and get an outline consent you need to sell same (so taking advice on likely end value before you start is a good idea to ensure marketability) and consider how to protect yourself thereafter from someone subsequently applying for another consent and intensification occuring by imposing a restriction on title (or overage clause) when you sell. So - quite a few steps. Alternatively you could just sell subject to planning.

It sounds like Sensus will be able to answer all your questions better than I can - but for what it's worth, I'd definitely put in a planning application (of some sort). You'd be pretty irritated to sell the land for peanuts and then find that a developer makes a killing on it.

One of the PPs made a good point about what you would want on the site - you can put on a restrictive covenant saying that the land can only be used for one (or a different number depending what you get planning for) private residential dwelling; no business use etc.

If you're offered the option of selling with an "uplift" provision - ie if the buyer builds anything you get X% of the gain, be careful as there are surprisingly many ways to get round this so you'd probably be better off putting in the legwork and applying for the consent yourself.