New home dream fallen apart....what to do next

[stressedabouthousesitu]

This is bit complex and I feel very stressed about it so your help needed. Long post so as not to drip feed.

We moved home to a new area in June 2024, after a couple of years of unsuccessfully trying to move in a really flat market. The move was motivated by being closer to family, as quieter life and good schools for the kids.

We ended up rushing the purchase to try to get into the new area before my daughter started secondary school. My husband's mum was also dying of cancer and we didn't do enough research or think it through properly with all of that going on, for which I am now kicking myself.

We bought a house in a rural area, close to a commuter town. The house backs onto farmers fields. I scoured the local plan in advance of the purchase and this area is not in the local development plan. There is also no current or past planning application on it.

While the property has a small garden in the deeds, it has an additional portion of garden used on licence from the landowner who owns the fields at the back. This was all clear in the transaction. What the sellers didn't disclose (and we have subsequently found out via local friends) is that property developers also have an interest in the land behind the house. While there's no application (yet), and it's not in the local plan, the local gossip (which we didn't know, not being local) is that the fields will be developed soon. If that happens we lose that part of the garden and will be right on top of a building site for years.

Now I've read enough Mumsnet to know that this is always the risk of buying near open fields. I knew it might come eventually but we've only been here 9 months. I feel that the sellers deliberately didn't disclose information,but it would be hard to prove. The challenge is what to do next.

I don't love the house, and I desperately don't want to live next to a huge building site for years to come. I'm worried wer'e going to lose lots of value off tthe house if we wait to try and sell once an actual planning permission is in. On the other hand, it could take years for anything to come through on planning (and it may not get trhough at all, as the site is very hard to access down country lanes). My kids are now settled in school and they are very happy here.

Can anyone help me think this through? I'm so upset, we were really aiming for one last move and to get settled in the 'perfect' house for 10 years or so. Now less than a year in, I want to move.

I know it’s disappointing when lovely open views get built on but it might not be as bad as you anticipate.

A friend of mine has lost her next door field to a housing development and actually it’s quite nice: nice looking houses; lots of green space with benches and trees.

The bit near her is built now (took about a year) and the ongoing construction is further away so she isn’t experiencing any more disruption.

There's no requirement for a seller to disclose "local gossip". That's all this is. You did all the right things and have found nothing solid to back up that local gossip. Even now you know the gossip, there is still nothing solid to back it up. I really think you need to focus more on what you know to be fact (ie: not in the local plan, no planning applications) rather than assuming the gossip is where the truth lies.

There are a lot of things here.

Firstly, contact the parish clerk and ask her if there have been any informal discussions about developing on your adjacent fields. Developers will usually send out a consultation paper to immediate neighbours', long before they submit a planning application.

Then ask for details of the local neighbourhood plan, the settlement boundaries, and whether the local council already has their five year supply of development land.

Look at the land itself. What features does it have? Is it agricultural land? If so, is it B&MV? Is is woodland or marshland? Does it face onto a chalk stream? Does it flood? Is it an SSSI? Does it teem with wildlife? All of these things will affect whether it will be considered suitable?

I live in a similar situation. The owner of the land behind my house has tried three times to get planning permission over the last 30 years. And failed. It faces onto a downland chalk stream and is flanked on a second side by common land that is also a SSSI. It floods. The access road is single track with passing places, cannot easily be widened and also floods. Our sewage plant is already overladen and the developer is not willing to pay for an upgrade.

We have another plot further up that received planning permission three years ago for a small number of houses. They haven't broken ground because the mortgage rates are high and few people can afford to buy. The only new house in our village in the last 2 years, the developers haven't been able to sell and is rented out.

So don't panic. Do your research and talk to your parish or town council.

Is the main issue the risk of losing the bit of your garden that isn't actually yours, but that you are using on licence?
Any chance of you buying this bit?

We asked, he said that it was too complicated to consider selling it to us because of 'other interests' in the land, by which I assume he means the developers. Happy for us to continue to use it under licence. If we lose that piece of land, we will have a small garden, but I am not too worried about that. It's more if an access road or something went there.

@Meadowfinch thank you that is so helpful. It is agricultural land at the moment with a woodland on one side. The only access is via a narrow single lane road. I will definitely talk to the parish council and see what they know.

In my more optimistic moments, this is what I hope for. But it's weighed down by the fact that I don't love the house that much anyway and I would have to live through at least a year of building works. I also look at some of the new estates around here and they've not been built with any desire to integrate them into their surrounds. No trees or nice landscaping, just hundreds of red boxes crammed in next to one another.

(I should say that at a principle level, I know we need new houses. I just wouldn't have chosen to live next door to them while they're being built).