Buying neighbour's land

[NutellaCrumpet1]

Our next door neighbour died in 2019 and her daughter now owns her house and also a separate piece of land that once was my part of my house's garden many, many years ago. It has its own deeds and title which means it could easily be sold separately from the main property. We have suggested we would like to purchase it and she has said she will think about it as she wants to sell the house and land soon but hasn't decided if to sell them together or if she would be willing to sell them separately.

So my questions are:

How do we go about putting a price on the land. It is approximately 10m x 20m? I should note it has no access except through neighbouring gardens and covenants to state it can't be used to put a new dwelling one.

Apart from offering to pay for a new fence to border of the little entrance from their garden to the other plot of land and also any legal fees what else can we suggest to make it sound like an attractive idea and not some massive inconvenience to the daughter to sell them separately?

And lastly, should we just wait for her to get back to us? It was quite a casual "we might like to buy that land one day" "oh, OK if I do decide to sell that separately I will think about letting you guys know" and that was it. Should we get back to her with a serious offer plus offering to fence it and the legal fees etc, so it that too pushy? I don't want to be pushy, but am scared she will just not really think we were serious or that it will be too complicated to do it separately and just put it on the market and it will be too late.

Any advice welcome!

Where are you? Land in London will be more expensive than outer Hebrides!

It's not clear in diagram how you would access the land.
Surely the best solution would be to buy a tiny corner of her garden so you could access from the back of your garden.

The land joins right on to OPs garden. It's the neighbour who would find it hard to access their own land.

Drop her a note

dear xxx,
We hope you are well. You might remember that a while ago we mentioned the possibility of buying the plot of land at the end of our garden from you. Not sure what your plans are re your mums house, but this is just to let you know that if in the future you are thinking of selling we are still very keen on buying the land as a separate lot to the house, we would of course be prepared to have a proper valuation done and pay for any solicitors and land registry expenses.

Very best wishes

zzzzzzzz

My diagram isn't the best! The plots aren't actually exactly square and even like the diagram and there is a tiny overlap of the neighbour's garden and the plot of land in question and they access the land this way. I will do a better diagram maybe.

We are Southeast, but not London.

I would just put it in writing to her, so that she can read it again at a later point and stress what your intentions are and that you would fence it and pay costs etc, and then just leave it in her hands to think about.

It will potentially bring down the overall value of her property, so she may well not want to do it, and certainly I wouldn't do it if I were her, without getting an EA to value everything .

Hopefully this is slightly better. Drawing isn't my strong point!!!

Digest a rics survey to value it at a fair price. We did that, although the surveyor was guided by what the seller would accept ( we gave an idea of what we could afford).

If it matters, the land is totally wild as they haven't been able to cope with the upkeep.

Is there any chance the land could be developed?

You need to make it worth her while. It could well be more valuable to her to sell it separately. Could you have a word with an estate agent and see what they say?

There is no way it could be developed. It just borders other gardens and it has restrictive covenants on it about building. Only other people who would be interested in it are the other garden owners.

The value of the land is the amount it will increase the value of your house by, plus costs.

Do you have an idea as to how much you would be willing to pay or how much you could afford to pay?

I'm guessing that if it was London it would be worth 50k+.
Does the covenant preclude buildings like a garden shed, home office etc or is it just dwelling homes?

If it helps our house and next doors house are worth about 400k according to Zoopla. The covenants do say no 2nd dwellings and also no outhouses or greenhouses and also no chickens or horses.

We could maybe afford 30k plus fees. But if it was worth more we could look to remortgage a bit as this is our forever home and would love the extra garden space.