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 am mystified,,, when you bought your house did you assume you could buy additional acreage knock down cost because your poppets can’t play in the garden like a normal person?

But it has BRAMBLES! And they are OLD! 🤣

There is no suggestion of "stealing" the land, just create an access point followed by clearing a small play area for DC. What a lovely outdoor adventure for the children to clear a tiny area of land. Perhaps If the OP asked the Owners for permission they might even agree? Who knows and frankly who cares, it is their land. The OP has been given a price of £60K which they either pay or do not. If I was the Owner and approached by neighbours for permission to allow their DC to play and tend to a small portion of it I might agree. However, it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

I am like your neighbours. I have acres and acres that according to my neighbours I'm not doing anything with. I get people calling and asking to buy or rent them at least 5 times a year. They are all moaning that I'm not doing anything with it, when they could be having their horses/plantings/whatever in them.

In reality, they are a haven for wildlife in the middle of quite a lot of what I would consider to be agricultural desert. I have had a survey which I identified several rare wildflowers and insects that are loving my meadows (which are cut way too late, when the hay they would make would be very poor, but after they have set seed). I have put in a pond which is full of frogs and gets visited by loads of birds and bats. We get birds of prey, there is so much more going on than when we got the place.

I couldn't care less that people would like to have it to put their horses on/their kids play in.

Ah, so you weren't suggesting OP steal's land when you said to move the fence and clear the land, you were actually suggesting trespassing and causing damage to somebody else's property.

@ExpatpoliticoIf it’s not your fence, you don’t create an opening in it! Plus, what do you not understand about using something that’s not yours without permission! You haven’t been brought up very well!