Just need to vent - neighbour wants £60,000 for an acre of land

[livelaughlambada]

Urgh, I just want to vent. We love our home - it's in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by fields. We would really like to buy one acre of land. It's owned by some people who don't farm and don't do anything with it. Land around here is probably £10,000 an acre for farmland. They want £60,000 for the acre. We just don't have it. And if we did, we couldn't possibly justify buying it - as in even if we could borrow the money, there is other stuff that we would spend it on first that is much more 'necessary'. I don't think they believe us, but it is just what it is. One of our kids loves football and would love to play on that land. It's just such a shame that there isn't a way around it. I know that it's absolutely their right and I also know it would add value to our house to buy it (although we will not be moving ever, so that is a long way off - and we just can't spend £60,000 on land that we might actually just have to sell off before the house one day). These people don't do anything at all with the land -- they have about 20 acres and it's just getting covered with brambles and crap (not in a nice rewilding way - just actual crap they've dumped there). They come here maybe once a month. I think their logic is that it would add £60,000 in value to our house (possibly true, I have no idea, but we will not move until the kids have left home and that's a couple of decades away). The MOST annoying thing is that they're somewhere in their sixties/seventies and have told us they don't want to sell because you don't pay inheritance tax on land. So it's worth just having it sit and rot rather than anything else. It's just SO ANNOYING.

I suspect they'd get a whole lot more than £10 K for it if they sold it to a developer as part of a larger plot. So they could be hedging their bets

These kinds of people are everywhere it seems. It also often leads to an unpleasant situation where they end up offended and rude. So tiresome.

@user5683926547 I imagine you would not relish if you’ve outlined your position (no) clearly to them that you would welcome if they come back with a lot of MN suggestions about how they could make their dream garden happen that doesn’t consider the position you’ve already told them.

you can put covenants on stuff....there are covenants on the house that I live in....as I understand it though you have to be prepared to go to the trouble of enforcing them? Different of course at point of sale if the covenants are registered on the deeds.

This

I don't know why you are getting annoyed. The land isn't available to you so move on.

I don't think I'd bother even offering to rent it. If they are bemoaning the state that the land is falling into I'd simply say would they mind if you cleared a bit so he can kick a ball about while he's a bit mad about football or make a den in the summer holidays. Get your strimmer out and take down some of the nettles and brambles. You may have a rethink about an acre at that point anyway it's very heavy work to clear. If they baulk, that's fine but you can gently point out that they are getting free clearance/gardening services but not to worry, you'll take him to the park.

You can’t just mow a bit.

I worked on a project last year where a set of new builds had their postage stamp gardens (literally 6m x 4m of turf laid by contractors) hadn’t been designated as residential garden. So as soon as they stepped out their back door it was ‘agricultural’. And do you know what happened? We had to do a change of use, BNG assessment and they had to pay thousands of pounds so they could continue to mow their lawn 😭

Honestly I felt so bad for them.

That sounds incredibly frustrating, and your annoyance is completely justified. It is maddening to look out at a piece of land that is literally sitting there collecting actual rubbish and brambles, knowing your kid could be using it to kick a football around, while the owners hold onto it for tax reasons.
They are thinking purely in terms of "hope value" (hoping a desperate neighbour will pay a massive premium) and capital gains/inheritance tax insulation. Because it's an asset they don't depend on, they have the luxury of being stubborn.
Since buying it outright for £60,000 is completely off the table, you don't have to just give up. In the UK, there are a few alternative legal and practical frameworks for accessing or using land without buying the freehold.
Here are a few ways you might be able to bypass the £60,000 brick wall:
Instead of buying, you could offer to lease just that one acre for a set period (e.g., a 5 or 10-year lease).
The Pitch: You pay them a small annual rent (farmland rents are typically only £100–£250 per acre per year, but you could offer a premium, say £500, to make it attractive).
Why they might bite: They retain ownership, so they keep their precious Inheritance Tax (IHT) exemption, but they get a bit of income, and you agree to keep that specific acre clear of brambles and maintained.

A Quick Note on Council Enforcement
If they are genuinely dumping "actual crap" (fly-tipping, hazardous waste, or unsightly scrap metal) rather than just letting nature take over, your local council's environmental health team can actually issue a Community Protection Notice or a Section 215 notice requiring them to clean it up. Sometimes, the threat of council hassle makes owners more willing to let a tidy neighbour manage the space.

It might be worth letting the dust settle for a few weeks and then approaching them with a completely different angle: "Look, we know £60k makes no sense for us, and we know you want to keep the land for your estate. Would you consider renting that single acre to us for £x a year so the kids can use it, and we'll keep it beautifully mowed and clear of rubbish for you?"

A "License to Occupy" is a more informal agreement than a lease. It simply gives you permission to use the land for a specific purpose (like a football pitch/garden extension) without granting you any legal tenancy rights.
The Pitch: You pay them a nominal token fee per year. You get to cut the grass and use it, and they can revoke the license with a few months' notice if they ever want to sell the whole plot.
Why they might bite: Zero risk to their ownership or tax status, and you do the hard work of clearing the "crap" and brambles from that section for free.

The owners mentioned holding the land to avoid Inheritance Tax (IHT). In the UK, Agricultural Property Relief (APR) can reduce IHT to 0%, but the rules are strict.
The Catch: To qualify for APR, the land generally must be occupied for the purposes of agriculture. If it is just sitting derelict, being used to dump rubbish, or letting brambles take over, HMRC can—and often does—challenge whether it actually qualifies as agricultural land upon death.
How to use this: You shouldn't lecture them on tax law, but if you approach them about a lease or license, you can frame it as: "We can manage the land to ensure it maintains its agricultural/open country status, which helps protect its tax valuation."

Yeah, this would be by far the best option.

But really, whatever it's "worth" is irrelevant. If they want to ask £60k for it, they have every right. If you don't want to pay it, that's also fine. But you can't make them take less, because it's THEIR land.

Exactly. We are not about to give away the only asset we have for a knockdown price!
Mostly people are very nice, we have lovely neighbours and the few that have extended their gardens are aware that the premium they paid for the land has increased their houses value very nicely too.
We did have a man a few years ago who kept greyhounds that he wanted to buy a practice race strip for, he couldn’t understand that a 200m X 10m strip straight across an arable field might have been a bit inconvenient for us to work around!

The complete lack of engagement with the idea of renting the land does make me a bit suspicious that OP is being disingenuous and part of her anger comes from the fact that her neighbours and now strangers on mumsnet aren’t buying the idea that it’s just a casual nothingy little bit of football related fun rather than a massive increase in property value that she’s demanding for a bargain price. And she clearly has plenty of outside space for playing - most people don’t measure their gardens in acres..

how more entitled can you get?

Fair enough you hope to buy, fair enough you are disappointed because it's only worth it for them to sell at a high price,

but arguing that you would have a much better use of the land than their rightful owner? 😂the cheek!

It would be convenient to YOU, but no, it's not a better use of the land at all.

You think it's worth more than £10k.. can you still afford it if you pay the going rate? Can you offer to pay someone other than them.. they get a peppercorn and you pay the rest to whoever they designate.
I would make a last and final off and leave it on the table, then walk away.

My next-door neighbour has two Porsches and their children go to private school they don’t need both cars so perhaps they could sell one for me for the £2000 that would be reasonable. I’ve extrapolated your logic to inner London - still doesn’t make sense

Maybe they have visions of selling the whole lot to a developer at a much higher price.

Probably easier just to move and get a house with a bigger garden than have designs over someone else's property at a price you (rather than they) want to pay for it.

Agree they are wrong about inheritance tax I think at one point agricultural land was excluded from the tax but that is no longer the case. If inheritance tax is the only reason they are giving you I would look up the relevant information and let them know they are mistaken

It’s their land, and they don’t want to sell it at a price you’re willing to pay. I don’t think that makes them unreasonable…but your belief that you ought to be able to buy it at a price you want to pay because you have what you perceive to be a better use for it (even though your use might well be a breach of planning regs in a national park) can only be described as entitled. I know plenty of landowners that frequently get such approaches, and seldom do they actually need or want to sell, so they don’t.

The IHT angle is a fair one…if it does qualify for APR relief at the moment then turning it into cash that will generate either CGT or income tax bills on future income / sale, and be subject to IHT on death then the cash value now would have to be way above the market value, whatever that is. And what the market value is isn’t its agricultural value for sure.

Instead of buying the land, if they aren't using that field, perhaps they would agree to rent it to you for a nominal sum if you cut the grass and just use it for playing/football pitch?

Buying land isn't the only solution.

😂
Arable land is worth around £15-20k and acre in large parcels, say 200 acres plus. A tiny little acre will be around that amount esp if it will dramatically increase the value of your property, which it will.
Farmer will also have to pay tax on the sale plus legal fees so he is not getting 60k from you, far from it!
You want something he's got so he can name his price really. Either that or you up sticks and move to a house with your desired acreage. I bet you won't be only spending 10k more for the privilege!

I'd genuinely want to sell something worth £10k for £60k too 😂
Land in Britain only goes up in price. The Duke of Westminster's land used to be almost valueless swamp. Mow it's Mayfair and he's one of the richest men in Britain.

I would assume at some stage you could build a smaller house on it for you and husband to downsize and have bigger house for your child and their valuation may be reasonable. Either way, they are entitled to sell it for whatever price they want and you don’t sound very reasonable on this tread. Insinuating that your child will only be able to use video games if he doesn’t get this acre of land that’s been cruelly held away from him. My elderly single uncle has a huge farm and I think he should give his nieces and nephews sites for free… can you recognise how entitled and unreasonable I sound with that statement?

We let the local smallholder keep sheep on our field. He provides the electric fencing himself & moves it from field to field.

It doesn't really matter what you believe, because the land isn't yours and nor is it likely to be so.

It would be nice for you if your neighbours were willing to sell at a price that you can afford but they're not.

They haven't wronged you or your children in any way by not doing so and irritation, frustration and anger at this is entirely inappropriate and suggests a strong sense of misplaced entitlement.