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.

They don't want to sell it because if it stays in their estate as farmland, they don't need to pay inheritance tax on it? If they sold it, they would have to pay inheritance tax on whatever that money was put towards instead.

Tbh, if I had a significant amount of land I wouldn’t sell an acre for 10k. 10k may be the estimated rate, but it’s really not a lot of money these days as a one off. Maybe they think their land, collectively, is worth a lot to the right person and selling of one acre for a small amount is detrimental to their wider aims.

The rule of thumb for pony paddocks is something like 3 times price of agricultural land, and being adjacent to your house is likely to add considerably more value. So whilst £60k may seem steep it's probably not far off it's value.

Just say thanks but no thanks, you can't afford it. How much land do you currently have,

I think this would be change of use from agricultural to residential land. If it is classed as agricultural land, using it as a garden/football area will not come within this use class.

Putting out goalposts, play equipment, mowing it very short can all count as change of use for farming land.

Land doesn't rot and disappear although it can become what's called derelict.

Bear in mind too that even if you could get the acre for somewhere closer to what you can afford, you would need planning permission to change it from straight agricultural land into garden or amenity land and in a very rural area, that permission is likely to be refused.

You said in the first post that they don't want to sell:

'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...'

Did you not notice that I started my post with "I just need to vent"? If you've got no sympathy for irritation, why bother posting?

You don't want to sell your house, but if someone wanted it so badly they might be prepared to pay 6 tines its value, you might reconsider. It's the same thing.

Agricultural land is designated property used primarily for farming, crop cultivation, or livestock rearing. To qualify for 100% relief, the landowner must typically have farmed the land themselves, had it used by someone else on a short-term grazing license, or let it on an eligible tenancy.

You say they approached you? That doesn’t make sense for you to be so cross. You didn’t ask them, but now you’re put out that they made you an offer when you didn’t ask for the space in the beginning? Make it make sense!

We wouldn't put out goalposts! Or play equipment. A patch of mowed land isn't going to bother anyone at all.

Update, the law was changed about mowing, you can mow it.

You're not going to be playing football on an area that's gone to brambles?

They don't want to sell at a sane price is what I meant. They would merrily sell at £60,000 an acre because that would negate the inheritance tax point.

Could you rent it off them for a fairly nominal amount for keeping it somewhat tidy?

They don't want to sell it. But at the same time you are way under estimating the value of the land adjacent to your house.

We sold an extremely small narrow strip of woodland next to my late parent's house for over £15k well over ten years ago.

Well that's part of the reason there's no point in renting it - which they don't want to do anyway. If we bought it, we would clear the brambles (but again that wouldn't change the use in any planning permission way).

Right well you cannot afford it and that’s that. No point getting angry, it is what it is unfortunately. You wouldn’t go into a chanel shop and have a strop because you couldn’t afford the price tag of a chanel bag.

A friend bought just under an acre behind her house about 12years ago for 30k then sold a couple of years ago when selling the house and it went to house buyer for 50k so I don’t think 60k is that far off.

However another friend bought a building plot with overage on and the estate concerned wanted 70k to start with but have gone down to 15k. Maybe worth trying to negotiate on half an acre possibly?

Is it classified as farmland?

Farmland is cheaper because there are serious restrictions on its use.

However the Gvt approach to Build Baby Build is leading to some very lax permissions, IMO.

And they may be looking at higher value potential uses.

Would they be amenable to you clearing enough for your Ds to play footie in? If you look up the rules about Adverse Possession and de-risk that for them?

Would they agree to rental?

They might be selling farmland but you are buying a garden extension/football pitch/orchard subject to planning which is worth significantly more. Plus, you're a captive market. Who else that's next door can you buy from?

You could clear the brambles if you rented it, that would be part of the deal.

Farmland also gets various subsidies and selling it off affects this.
This actually not a shocking price for a paddock as pp has also said. Are you new to your area ?
Also you would need planning permission to make it part of your garden, which depending on where you are, you might not get.
I don’t know the rules in Scotland, so if you are there it might be different.