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 you are in the middle of nowhere and the landowners visit infrequently and presumably do not visit you, then, if the land is adjacent to your garden I would quietly extend the boundary, clear a small area, just enough for your children to play cricket, basketball or ball games. Who would know? Who would care?

If the owners are upset by the state of the acre currently could you offer to clear it in return for the kids playing on it?

@ExpatpoliticoOur neighbour tried this. Moved wire from a fence to annexe off part of our woodland! Do not ever do it. It’s stealing and dc can play on the land if no one notices but DO NOT take it. We made sure everyone in the village knew what our neighbour did. Plus we erected a big fence so he has a not so nice outlook from his land now. Be very careful about taking anything that’s not yours.

You can't clear it no. If it is agricultural and has subsidies associated with it then the brambles and so on will be registered and the land use will be checked by drone.
It's also a beneficial habitat and clearing technically needs permission for change of use to residential or for development.
As for stealing land - absolutely not, that's an outrageous suggestion you would be best deleting.

I wouldn't call it 'wild' to want £15k for a plot big enough to add a garden and parking to a house. I know people who pay more than £4k per year to rent a parking spot near their homes.

No!
I think the owners might well notice.
i have a relative who did this and I completely despise him for it. Sheer greed and immorality.
Would you like someone to do it to you? 😲

It’s quite possible they receive subsidies for facilitating natural habitats, why would they be unhappy? If OP cleared it to use for non agricultural purposes it would need a change of use application and they would loose any financial benefit, why would they do that? As for not declaring, land receiving subsidies is GPS to the mm drone checked regularly.

I think they hold all the cards. It would add so much more to the value of your house. They would be fools to sell for £10k.

Most small land owners cannot get subsidies! I wish! You have to be a certain size to qualify. Agricultural land is a planning term. It doesn’t mean anyone gets a farming subsidy.

No, it wouldn't. And your neighbours are very well aware of this clearly.

You would sell it with the house, so a house with an acre plus of garden land. It's going to add far more than £10k value to you property. Stop playing daft.

I agree

The bottom third of our garden belonged to next door when we bought the house. It had been sold to them during the war as a kitchen garden, but had just become an unused, unkept piece of land in recent years. I asked an estate agent for a valuation and he said as the land had no planning permission and no access, it was only worth what we were willing to pay for it and what next door was willing to sell it for. It had no intrinsic value. Perhaps you could try this too?

I would say they don't want to sell the land.

That's what she's done - and they want £60k or it's not worth their effort. In fact, I expect they are not interested in selling at all, but are fed of of being approached and so just threw a number our there that would put anyone (sane) off...

What the OP can't seem to undertand is that she has no right to buy it, and no right to expect them to negotiate. It's their land, they've had it for ages and see no need to sell. Fairness has nothing to do with it - it's not hers, and she's not entitled to demand anything from the owners. She's asked, they've given an answer and she doesn't like it. No more complicated than that :)

I wanted to buy the plot next door to us and asked for an independent evaluation. I was told that no matter what the seller wanted for it (he said it was buildable but did not have planning permission and had a very steep slope from the street), that it was really only valuable to me as the neighbour, but as my garden was sizeable already it really wouldn’t add much value and could be seen as a negative. It remains unsold 15 years later (I no longer live next door).
Can you ask to rent it? At a nominal amount?

Your neighbour’s plot was already part of a suburban garden, so none of the issues op has with someone else’s farmland apply.

Exactly! diamonds aren’t rare and have been the subject of a mid C20 canny marketing strategy by De Beers to make people think that an engagement ring has to be a diamond: Diamonds are for ever. Get a lab grown one because they’re identical.

they have said what they are willing to sell it for which is 60k

@ArabellaScottNo, you are not correct. Agricultural land is not automatically classed as garden. It needs change of use pp. Where I live, a neighbour had a paddock attached to their garden and wanted to demolish their bungalow and build a house on the agricultural paddock. It was refused, and at appeal. After 20 years it can become garden I believe but it still might not get pp. Depends where you live and restrictions in place. However anywhere with more land is worth more than somewhere without it!

You've tagged the wrong person.

I mean at the end of the day the land is their's. You have absolutely no entitlement to it and tbh it doesn't sound like you're planning on doing anything a whole lot more exciting with it than the current owner. Land tends to differ immensely in value depending on what development opportunities there are. If it's worth 60k it's worth 60k whether you like it or not. The land owner could cause all sorts of problems for themselves if they sell it at an undervalued price because then they might significantly devalue their own property. The only way to do it reasonably is to have someone value the land. If you aren't willing to pay 60k and the owner isn't willing to sell for any less than this though then it's a moot point. If they might be prepared to wiggle a bit depending on valuation then it might be worth going down that road.

That would be both immoral and illegal. If I have misunderstood then you have my sincere apologies but it seems as If you are suggesting breaking the law to get your own way. Surely not?

It's not farmland though is, it's their property. This is wild behavour from you tbh,very entitled.

@italianmountains In planning terms it’s agricultural land. It’s certainly not garden land!

The thing is it would add a huge amount to the value of your house.... And that's what they're thinking and they aren't bothered about selling it so you need to balance the value as farmland which is 10k and what value it would add to your home, which would be way beyond 10k... Big parcels like that next to a house are worth a lot and you're valuing it as farmland... You're barking up the wrong tree here.. because that isn't a playing field that is 'room for a pony'.