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!

Good Lord, is this a reverse?
Either extend your mortgage and pay up the very reasonable marriage vale of £60k or keep your head down, your current agest entitled attitude will I suspect lead ultimately to no sale at any price.

Or worse the poor owners might get completely fed up with your attitude and plant an evergreen woodland.

No view, shady existing garden suddenly £60k seems a bargain.

And once it becomes woodland, it cannot be cleared without permission, which is very hard to get!

No, it isn’t easier to ask forgiveness for using someone else’s land.
It’s trespass.

The more I think of this the less reasonable the OP seems.

£10k is not enough even to make it worth the effort and the cost of taking on a solicitor and dealing with the transfer, let alone to also cover the value of the land, the re-fencing of the new boundary and so on.

This poster sounds great!!!

She's spot on. Wish more people were like her....

Ponds, bats and frogs beat dahling clemmie or theo 'needing' a pony paddock or footie pitch all day

I can emphasise. We had similar. We wanted to buy our late neighbour’s 1.5 acre field which is next to our house. Land around here averages at £10-20k, so we thought £30k + £10 - 20k because it’s next to our house. Nope, they wanted £80k “because it would add value to our house”. They were probably right, but it felt like a slap in the face. We already have 20 acres though. Anyway we didn’t buy it. It’s still sitting there going to weed. Frustrating but hey ho. An estate agent said an acre or two could add £100k to a house, so it probably would be worth it for you. An acre wouldn’t add that much to an existing small holding though.

For what it’s worth, we have just had to pay IHT on our land, despite it being classed as agricultural land. You have to be able to show you’ve actively farmed it. Or did before retirement.

@RockinCara How can you be writing this if you have died and your estate has paid IHT? You cannot have paid it - unless you didn’t own it and you’ve inherited it!

@MeetMeOnTheCorner You question where I was brought up? In the middle of a neglected huge meadow of course along with a bunch of friends. We "stole" blackberries from all the brambles and observed wildlife!

This sounds rather wonderful .

@Expatpolitico No, not where! How were you bright up that you thought it ok to take what you wanted from someone else’s land! We were taught to ask first.

why did it feel like a slap in the face? you asked to buy something and were told the seller's price.

this....spooky!

Yes obviously I’ve not died and paid it on land we inherited.

adding an acre to your garden for £60k is a bargain - they could sit on the land and possibly get planning permission in 20-30 years and land would be worth more

Just because they don’t use it and you want it, your kids would like it doesn’t mean you’re entitled to it, any more than you’re entitled to front up and use their spare bedrooms, that’s not how the world works.

if you can’t afford something available for sale. No matter how much you want it or like it, be it a Wendy house, a car or a leather jacket, you simply can’t have it. People are entitled to retain whats theirs even if they don’t use it and only sell for a price they are happy to let it go for.

You can’t do that it’s trespass.

Actually this I understand, when you already have 20 acres an additional 1.5 acres won’t increase the house value in a similar way.

You are advocating theft however you dress it up. What a shining example you are, if you want something that belongs to someone else just take it and see if you get caught, I pity your neighbours.