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.

you say there is no chance of getting planning permission on the piece of land but presumably the builder who built your house was granted it at some point?

Offer them what you can afford and leave it at that.

Would what you want to do on the jand fit the farming remit though, or would you need to be sure of getting change of use??

No, I STRONGLY believe that it's definitely a much better use of land that a couple of seventy-somethings occasionally drive up and look at the land and look a bit depressed about how it's getting covered in brambles and nettles and thistles and all the fences are falling over, but WILL NOT sell because they don't want to pay inheritance tax on the £200,000 it's worth (the rest of their assets easily take them over the limit). God forbid a couple of small children spend a few happy years building dens and running about when they could be inside playing Fortnite. You're absolutely right.

you STRONGLY believe that its a better use of the land because its what YOU want.

You’re not listening. You’re unlikely to get the planning. If you do then the current price is 41k for destroying bramble scrub.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/statutory-biodiversity-credit-prices

I don't think planning permission existed as a concept when this house was built!

There are probably tax/inheritance tax issues for them as they are older.
Although of course if they sold it for less there would be less tax to pay.🤷‍♀️

I used to live in a little cottage, which had a small patch of land opposite that I owned, directly adjacent to a communal block and car park. At some point the landlords of the block offered to ‘take the land from me in order to extend local parking facilities and would offer you a parking space in perpetuity in exchange for the land.’ This would have removed maybe 20k from the value of my home (plus it had lots of trees bushes where birds and hedgehogs lived) and I also used it for growing and socialising. I also didn’t drive. So obviously I told them (politely) to shove it. They were quite annoyed and perplexed, telling me their vision of an extended car park was a better use of my land than it occasionally being used by me for leisure. My point is, it’s their land, just because you value it at £10k it doesn’t mean they agree or want to lose the land for that price. If you want it that badly then you up your offer, or else forget it.

What do you think is the better use for the land?

Now you are being ridiculous take them or send them to the fucking park. I'd love it if your neighbours were on mumsnet. They wouldn't sell to you in a million years.

I have seen on some properties a clause that if it's sold at a later date for much more than market value, for example a barn which had been converted into an office but had planning to turn into residential and could be worth a lot more than as a home, then you'd need to pay a percentage of that profit to the previous owner. I guess that's something the field owner could put into any land sale sales contract if they were worried you might be buying it cheap to then apply for pp and make a profit. I know they offered it to you, but did you say you'd be interested first for them to do this @livelaughlambada ?

How much land do you have with your o2n house if you're in the middle of nowhere.

It’s not your land so it really doesn’t matter what you think🤷‍♂️

But you said they approached you and asked if you’d like to buy it?!
It can’t be both scenarios simultaneously.

They don’t want to sell it, hence the ridiculous price.

We have a garden. Not sure how to explain the size! I love it, but it's not very big.

But it's not farmland is it? You get agricultural property relief on land property that is being used for agricultural purposes. Not just because it could be used for agricultural purposes.

This! A firm I worked at 30+ years ago wanted to buy an acre of land to extend their factory. It was basically just a field with a horse grazing on it. Finally agreed a deal to buy it for £30,000 PLUS buying another one acre field elsewhere for the horse owner to put their horse on.

In cases like this, you really can't use "farmland" value, it's like a "ransom strip" when a particular person wants a particular piece of land for a particular reason so the "value" sky-rockets.

The OP's neighbour knows they want the land, so it's entirely up to them whether they sell at all, and what kind of price they're willing to sell for. Literally no one else can force them to change their mind or use an alternative valuation.

It doesn’t matter what anyone considers a good use of the land - it belongs to someone else who can do with it whatsoever they please.

How come your house is in the middle of fields yet you have no outside space at all?

This is such an outrageous post. It’s not your land and they’re allowed to do whatever the hell they want with it. They don’t have any obligation to do you or your kids a favour.

You're absolutely right.

you have a shitty attitude.

OP, you are sounding very entitled. I have land, my neighbour wanted to buy it, I said no. That was my right as the owner of the land. If they were to offer me a great price, I may consider it, but they wanted it cheap. Your neighbour has expressly stated that they need 60000, to negate any financial burden of inheritance tax. You can't afford it. It doesn't matter what they do with it. It is theirs and frankly none of your business, because, you can't afford it.

You sound very unpleasant and spiteful.