Complicated story cut short: I have to put a value on a strip of land at the back of my garden.

Size approx 3 to 5ft by 30ft.

Land Registry require a value, but no money will actually change hands.

I’m thinking £500 to £1k?

Advice from anyone in a related profession or who has done similar will be gratefully received.

🙂

Is it to your advantage to have a higher or lower value? Who needs it valued? Context would be very useful here.

Ransom Strip

peterfile – Member
Ransom Strip

An odd series of words there

Ask a local estate agent. i had a similar thing with a garage I bought

Is it to your advantage to have a higher or lower value?

Neither.

Housebuilders “stole” a bit of the park behind my house 30 years ago, and we are now putting application for possession in to Land Registry.

Solicitor says they want a value attributed to it, it seems to be a formality. I don’t expect to have to pay anything apart from solicitor’s fees.

xcgb – good call, will do that.

<DrEvil>One million dollars</DrEvil>

<DrEvil>One million dollars</DrEvil>

I’ve also used the figure of £1,000,000/acre for good building land. I think I saw it on TV once 🙂 . That would make your plot about £2,500. That’s not far off what I’d expect to pay if my neighbour offered me the last 5′ of their garden. £500 sounds very cheap

£1m an acre is well over the top unless it is a decent plot in a really really good area. I would think about half that for an average site and even less if it is not a workable site.

If it’s just a formality, call it a quid.

£37.64

42

Will you get charged capital gains tax on the nominated value or the actual price paid?

As above, though, they’re not called Ransom Strips because they’re cheap.

Solicitor says they want a value attributed to it, it seems to be a formality.

Is that because they might offer to buy you out rather than return it?

Housebuilders “stole” a bit of the park behind my house 30 years ago

So you want to formalise the theft of public land?

wwaswas – Member

Housebuilders “stole” a bit of the park behind my house 30 years ago

So you want to formalise the theft of public land?

Isn’t that how all land ownership started…

I would imagine that Land Registry will only require a value to assess Stamp Duty and you will be significantly below any thresholds and so really a pretty meaningless value. Land will only be a ransom strip if it can become the key to enhancing the value of another piece of land such as controlling the access that can then facillitate development.
This does not appear to be the case here because otherwise you would not be so relaxed about it. Normally there is a lower limit on land transactions because otherwise why bother to instruct solicitors. That limit I often think is about £5000. Below that then it is possible take eventual ownership by adverse possession and don’t bother with solicitors thus saving the costs which if paying for both sides can quickly outweigh the value of the land (it is what the Highways Agency often do when handing back unwanted land after road schemes)
If it is just a strip of garden land then £1000 should not be unreasonable and will not cause raised eyebrows at the Land Registry.

We’re still looking at houses. We went to one and the owners had at some point sold most of the back garden to their neighbour, presumably because they didn’t want it.

What that meant to us was we weren’t interested (estate agent didn’t provide a picture so we had no idea before we arrived) and said so before we left. The lady looked at us resignedly and said
“Is it because of the back garden?”

So that one was worth about £180k

Isn’t that how all land ownership started…

I seem to recall it started by involving a load of johnny foreigner sounding blokes turning up on your nearest beach and saying…

UPP MED HÄNDERNA!
haut les mains!
Hande Hoch!
manus sursum!

or something like that.. maybe taking the wife off your hands… giving your hair a bit of a trim with a Gladius/Spartha/Dane Axe depending on origin of Johnny Foreigner…