New House - Leased Garden Now Up For Sale

[johnworf]

We are in the process of buying a house - surveys done, searches back, enquiries done so not far from exchange.

The house we are buying has land next to it which came as part of the sale - it's rented at £240pa and we were told when we viewed that if the land came up for sale, we would have first refusal at a price of between £10-15k. We were happy with this and would have money to cover this if it came up in the future.

The EA has just rung to say 'I have good and bad news'. The good news is, the land is now up for sale. The bad news is they have had it resurveyed and they want £40k. We cannot afford this. The land by itself without planning permission is not worth this. Probably worth half of this, tops.

This now impacts the sale of the house which is a 2 bedroomed end terrace. We only bought it because of the (leased) garden as otherwise, it has no garden at all. It's now in the hands of the house sellers to negotiate on our behalf as if our offer isn't accepted, then we shall pull out of the sale. I shall cry if we have to.

Has anyone else been in this situation? What was your outcome? I'm panicking and looking for some reassurance!

So it was the vendors, who don’t own the land, that told you how much you would be able to buy it for if it came up for sale?

Land has increased in price, DSis has a couple of fields and is currently wrangling over the price of selling her share to STBX BIL.

If you want a house with a garden I’d pull out because 1)there is no guarantee the new owners will rent it to you and the owners clearly want more for it than you can pay. 2) you can’t just turn a field into a garden as it may need planning permission to do so.

www.struttandparker.com/inspire/a-guide-to-buying-or-selling-land-to-make-a-bigger-garden

You were naive to assume that it would all be OK though. At least you found out before you bought the house. Time to move on and start looking for another house.

You have been very lucky to find out before you exchanged. All you can do is put it down to experience. I do hope it works out but the reality is that you had no guarantees.

You could ask for an independent survey to establish value. A quick price survey would cost very little on a patch of land - nothing like the work involved in a building survey.

It was EA who told us the price would be £10-15k based on a survey that was done 4 months ago. Now they have decided to sell another survey was done and this one claims the land is now worth £40k.

If owners of the house cannot negotiate on our behalf then we walk away from it. The house isn't worth what we offered without the garden with it.

And you're right, good we found out now and can walk away but I'll be sad. I've had a quick look around rightmove this afternoon and there's bugger all out there.

I think the clincher here is "The EA told us it would be worth..." If theres one rule in life, its never, ever, never believe what an EA says. All they want is a sale, then it ceases to be their problem.

I'm pleased you found out now.