Posted: Thu Jun 13, 13 7:42 pm Post subject: Where should I start?
A guy just knocked at the door, and in short has offered a large sum to buy most of the garden to build a detached 3 bed on.
How do I start to find out what it's worth and how best to do this?
He says if we value our place, divide the sum by 3 then thats what it's worth, but this doesn't seem to stack up for me?
Lorrainelovesplants
Joined: 13 Oct 2006 Posts: 6521 Location: Dordogne
Posted: Thu Jun 13, 13 7:48 pm Post subject:
Look at commercial building plots for an idea of price.
If, as he suggests you opt for a third, and your house is worth, say £300,000 - you are valueing the plot as what a third or 2/3rds of this.
Remember that you are also devalueing yours as you are reducing the garden size.
Take some legal advice I think, and speak to a local surveyor...
Probably no coincidence, a week ago we had a surveyor in to offer advice on development potential, and he was shall we say, a bit limp on the concept, so the trail went cold for a few days. And then this.
Speak to local estate agents. If you have a big garden it may not devalue your house very much. I spoke to one a while ago that said people don't expect large gardens these days, so even with 1/3 your plot, that may be acceptable to most people. Only devaluation might be if the new properties overlooked yours, cut out light or similar, but you could probably insist you only sold on condition bungalows or whatever where built if this is a problem.
Btw, we didn't sell ours as it would have brought the new houses too close for our taste.
When we were buying we really struggled to get over to the agents that when we said "we want a garden" we meant more than a pocket handkerchief lawn. In the end we found the key word was "acreage" even when we looking for sub 1 acre.
Also bear in mind that while they might say it is one 3 bed house, they might change on that when they put in the planning application. We used to live in a house which had had half the garden sold prior to us being there, for building a bungalow - and they put up a two storey house smack in the view.
So if you are tempted, talk very seriously to a solicitor about how to retain control of what is built (if that is possible.)
I don't trust estate agents further than I can throw them. Once bitten twice shy. Plus, they'll know all the local builders/developers . . .
Big gardens are getting more popular, but the value that one might add to your property is based more on it's bulding potential than it's domestic use.
The distance from the next house also has a big inlfluence on house price. Also you can't really base the land price on how much the plot including the existing house is worth. I'm not suggesting your house comes into this category, but sometimes a house is so bad that it actually devalues the land it's on!
Personally I wouldn't do it unless I was moving out, contracts signed and everything, but it's not likely to happen anytime soon, because I actually want a big garden and there is precious little out there. Oh yes 'acre' really is the key word. We have half an acre between two modest 3B's, and I can't find one anywhere I'd like to move to, with such a high land to bedroom ratio!
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