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.

If they do want to sell, and you do want some extra space, then why not offer 20K for a half acre, compromise both ways?

Might they agree to a long lease (like 100 years or something) so that the actual ownership stays with them but you (and any future owners of your home until the expiry of the 100 years) can enjoy the use of it? That would have a lot lower price tag as it wouldn't increase the value of your property so much but you could have almost all the benefits.

I'm not saying the field is worth £60,000, but I think it's probably worth way more than £10,000.
I don't know where you live, but where I am individual fields next to houses are viewed as amenity land and priced differently.
Twenty years ago we bought our house and paid £25,000 for just over an acre of not good land.
Perhaps that makes you feel better?
They are perhaps irritated if they think you want to acquire it for £10,000. You could try offering a more realistic price?
Or, would they consider renting you the field, and you could offer to make it good ie renew the fencing and get some goats onto the brambles?

They are simply maximising their assets for whoever will inherit. Why on earth would they sell at 10K to op when they could possibly get more in the future or use it to avoid inheritance tax? It doesn’t make any sense.

I don’t think it’s an unusual set up tbh. My own ye olde farmhouse would of been part of a big estate but farms grew in size ( technology) and the unused housing stock was sold off. I’m surrounded by farmland. I don’t have immediate neighbours but there’s still quite a lot of us scattered sbout. I don’t own the driveway but have access rights. My garden is less than a quarter of an acre but have a septic tank. I doubt it’d be approved by Sepa these days ( north of border) but my private water supply and the septic tank soak away are rights I have in perpetuity over the neighbouring land.

I can see their point if it will add 60k to the value of your home then it is what the land is worth. 10k an acre for farmland is not really a fair comparison as you are not going to use it for farmland you are going to add the land onto property. It doesn't matter that you don't intend to sell it will still increase the value of your property.
But ultimately it is their land and they can charge what they want for it. And you can either buy it or not.

What is your point about them being in their seventies? You make it sound that people in their seventies are less entitled to own land than people of other ages.
Would things be different if they were in their thirties, or fourties?

This.

But if you would like to take the initiative why not get a valuation from a reputable rural surveyor and if you are happy with this number approach them using this as a counter offer. They may not accept but at least you would be showing you were a serious and thoughtful buyer.

....or a pushy one who won't listen when told the price?

Oh, it's definitely believable. I, and others on this thread, have experience of people thinking that just because they live next to a field that they have a right to buy it/ use it/ have free access through it/ use it as a playground for their children/ complain that the owner doesn't comply with their wishes/ instigate a bullying campaign against the owner and any other local people who don't see things the same way as them. <<< I've seen all of these things, and more, happen in the small rural village I live in. You are right that it's outrageous, but these numpties think they are being reasonable!

👏🏻👏🏻Came to say this.

IHT rules on agriculture all changed in April 2026

it won’t be farmland, will it. Do you have services? Drains/ sewers, mains electricity , etc? Access road ? Because if you do, this becomes a potential building plot. My ex has 107 acres. He knocked back an offer of £40 million for it.

Bloody hell entitled much!!

Yes, one is deluded and the other is a standard price.

So if it would increase the value of your posessions by about £60k the key question is by how much will it reduce the value of their holdings if they sell it. If the answer to that is £10k then a fair price would be £35,000 - which means that you both profit from the transfer to the tune of about £25,000. Except that for them, that £25,000 is only "actually" worth £15,000 because they regard it as an inheritance tax liability. That may be unreasonable, but it's how they see it. An appropriate best and final offer would therefore be £40,000.

And why do you think they priced it at 6 times its value? It’s because they do not want to sell it.

Buying a small amount adjacent to your property is the expensive way to buy land. It will of course increase the value of your property no matter how worthy your intended use is.

When I was selling my previous house and land came up. I looked at buying it with the 10k an acre expectation but because of the location of my property (and I only wanted a third of an acre) it was offered at 45k! I didn’t go for it.

My ex SIL owns a magnificent second home in Devon. They immediately had the bright idea to buy all the land around them for a really low price. Suffice to say the landowner didn’t go for it.

If you bought it you would still need change of use from agricultural to recreational use.

I was going to reply with some helpful suggestions, but you have really put me off OP with some of your responses.

Thats on them, let them stew on it. They will soon realise location (protected etc) they are not getting 60k.

They might get more (or certainly more than 10K) - depends who wants it. Or they might not care about selling it.

Irrespective of all that, the OP isn't getting it for £10K!

I’d also like to spend £10k to add £60k worth of value to my home, so if anyone comes up with a solution to this can you please also keep me in the loop, ta.

OP if you want a truly sympathetic audience DM me and I’ll share the contact details of my relative who decided I should sell them my home for the price I paid for it years before simply because it was ‘the easiest and cheapest option’ for them.

Was my house for sale? No.
Was the price I paid the current value at the time? Also no. They decided they were paying the price from when I bought it and not a penny more and I needed to get on board.

They were similarly outraged and venting that I was sitting on an asset they could make better use of and was being horribly unreasonable by pointing out I would only sell for market value because they didn’t have market value and why did I think I was entitled to benefit from that anyway, being greedy when they just wanted to live there.

They were similarly silent when I pointed out they would be the one getting the appreciation value under the terms they suggested. And similarly salty when challenged on why their needs trumped anyone else's.

Bottom line - you are not entitled to other people’s assets on your terms regardless of how hard done by you consider yourself or how ageist you are. Your other thread is highly relevant.

You forget one day you’ll be older and sitting on assets younger people feel entitled to, and I can’t imagine you’ll be selling your house for half its value in the spirit of helping the younger generation out.

Thinking about it more, I don’t think £60,000 seems so wrong.

Land is getting more and more valuable, and land next to a person’s house is clearly worth multiples of a plot the same size in the middle of a remote field. It’ll have services next to it, a road, access and so on.

OP, is it really not worth extending your mortgage for? I’d easily pay £100,00 extra for a house with an extra acre over one with just a normal garden.