We've been offered the chance to buy a piece of land we rent, which consists of a driveway and a shambolic and unusable garage with a concrete base.

The farmer selling it says he's had it valued at £8-10k, however we feel this is very steep for a strip of land which is about 15m x 3m.

Is there a rule of thumb for valuing a square metre of land like this? We're in a rural area of E Lancs if that helps.

You'll get wildly differing values. I looked into this for a patch of land outside the back of ours last year and needed a rough guide. The best I could really do was find that an average acre of farm land was about £10,000 but obviously this is massively skewed by regional differences. Looking at your land though and applying this very simplistic view, I struggle to see how the farmer could get anywhere near £10,000, given it amounts to about 0.2 acres.

That sounds like a valuation of the unencumbered Freehold, and even then
it sounds a bit high.

Of course, you are the tenants and therefore the land is not unencumbered with it being
subject to your tenancy. It depends on the nature and terms of your tenancy as to
how much your legal occupation, by way of the tenancy, affects the value.

Also, consider if you are a "special purchaser" in that if you don't buy it, who will ?
Is it of any use to anyone else ?

Get it bought you tight git..

Walton wrote:We've been offered the chance to buy a piece of land we rent, which consists of a driveway and a shambolic and unusable garage with a concrete base.

The farmer selling it says he's had it valued at £8-10k, however we feel this is very steep for a strip of land which is about 15m x 3m.

Is there a rule of thumb for valuing a square metre of land like this? We're in a rural area of E Lancs if that helps.

Speak to a professional. Ian Bythell at Petty will sort you out.

Surely, like anything, the land is worth what someone will pay for it? If you think it's too high, either don't buy it or offer less?

I am a professional, albeit retired. Know Ian well, and many others.

Cheers Dushanbe, the 10k/acre is a good benchmark for us to start thinking about.

Funkydrummer: the general scenario is that our row has farmland front and back, and this is the land at the back.

Ours is the only house on the row with the farmland 'developed' like this, however the farmer has offered for sale the strip of land in line with each house. We understand that ours will be valued higher than the undeveloped farmland outside our neighbours' houses, however the farmer has said that if we didn't buy the land he'd sell it to someone else.

Parking is at a premium on our street, with our house being the only one with 2 parking spaces. The other houses have back yards and the undeveloped farmland opposite, we have a parking space instead of the yard, and the land opposite. So pretty much no one has parking space.

Presuming you have bought a house next to the land ask an estate agent round to value the house with the land aquired.
Or work out how much you pay in rent for it per year. A house generates about 6% of value in a calender year. For the same principles of a 10k piece of land you would pay 600 pounds a year.

Quickenthetempo wrote:Presuming you have bought a house next to the land ask an estate agent round to value the house with the land aquired.
Or work out how much you pay in rent for it per year. A house generates about 6% of value in a calender year. For the same principles of a 10k piece of land you would pay 600 pounds a year.

We pay £365 a year, which when looking at the ground rent on a garage we've had use of before seemed steep as it was.

Grab it, you capitalist land-grabber.

He can't sell it to someone else, unless :-

1. The purchaser doesn't want to occupy the land ie purchase as an investment (highly unlikely for such a small parcel of land)
OR
2. The vendor terminates your lease, if he is legally able to do so. (comes down again to the nature/terms of the lease)
and sells it with vacant possession.

It depends how much value it puts on your house. If it puts over £10k on the value of your house then its probably worth buying if you can afford it. Also when you come to sell your house would it easier to sell with the attached land?
If its your ownership you have control it whereas if its rented and the farmer decides he no longer wants to rent it to you would it cause you a problem re parking etc

Funkydrummer wrote:I am a professional, albeit retired. Know Ian well, and many others.

He's a top bloke is Ian. And a cracking cricketer. He's been (trying to) teach me a fair bit at Pendle Forest.

I'm about to start working towards RICS chartership, albeit in brick counting...

If it was me and I wanted or needed it then I guess I'd try to get him down a little....but if he didn't budge on price I'd just pay him. Also ask yourself how much value it will put onto your house having the driveway and garage....?

applecrossclaret wrote:It depends how much value it puts on your house. If it puts over £10k on the value of your house then its probably worth buying if you can afford it. Also when you come to sell your house would it easier to sell with the attached land?
If its your ownership you have control it whereas if its rented and the farmer decides he no longer wants to rent it to you would it cause you a problem re parking etc

We've actually had our house on the market for the last couple of months, and there's no way it would add £10k to the value of the house. It's a small house and adding that amount on top takes us into another level of competition, which we wouldn't win.

FD: the landlord has said he'd honour our rental period: we paid 6 months rent in advance, in August

If you're moving then leave it alone.

Walton wrote:We've actually had our house on the market for the last couple of months, and there's no way it would add £10k to the value of the house. It's a small house and adding that amount on top takes us into another level of competition, which we wouldn't win.

FD: the landlord has said he'd honour our rental period: we paid 6 months rent in advance, in August

Knowing the land is available to buy might make your home more attractive to a purchaser. Make sure your estate agent knows.

If the purchasing of the land wouldn't add value to your house and as you say you have had it on the market for a couple of months, if the plan is too move in the near future/when you receive an acceptable offer then I wouldn't go through the headache of spending the 10k for the parking if you're moving anyway.

LoveCurryPies wrote:Knowing the land is available to buy might make your home more attractive to a purchaser. Make sure your estate agent knows.

They are aware, but if anything it has been a distraction for viewers. They don't like the uncertainty surrounding it, and definitely don't like the prospect of someone else buying it. We can't justify the significant outlay on the land while considering selling however, so it's catch 22. We would want to buy it, at the right price, but we don't feel it represents value at the current price.

It will be a distraction and could put people off buying your property knowing that there is land for sale adjacent to yours. I guess the farmer is sort of viewing the plot he wants to sell you as a brown field site as it already has a structure on it albeit a shambolic and unusable garage, your words!!!!. You need to find out if it can truly be viewed as a brownfield site and not still agricultural.

Slight side issue and it may not affect you because it sounds like the bit of land you may be purchasing is already developed. However, if the farmer is offering a strip of farmland to other residents they need to be aware that you actually need planning permission to change the use of agricultural land to residential garden/ parking areas. It might not be a problem and many people do it without realising that they need permission and the Council don't do anything about it. However, that's not always the case so it's worth checking with the Council before spending cash on an assumption that you could use it for domestic purposes.

We have a similar situation, we live in a rural village (Fence). We live on an unadopted cul de sac with a private parking space on the other side of the road. Because of the lack of parking in the village when we bought the house (a few years ago) the land came with the house. The parking space was valued at £10,000

As someone who has experience in these matters the land is not just 'rural' land. If it has a building on it it is potentially worth more than the same size strip without a building. It does not matter if it is dilapidated. As it joins residential property it has added value. As another poster has mentioned it is how much value it could add to the property.

Little O/T but a small piece of land with permission to build a one bed bungalow round the corner from me is on the market for 100 k. Madness.

I have an allotment, probably about 4 or 5 times this for £20/year.