MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
We've had an offer accepted on a nice house in a Surrey village (very STW, I know!). Doing some due diligence we've found that the land that the house backs on to (currently a lightly wooded paddock) will be reclassified as part of the council's Local Plan to now be within the settlement boundary. (Good thing we checked, the estate agent was adamant that the land would never get planning permission for a house. Hmm.)
We've talked to the landowner of the paddock, who is very open about his desire to sell the land to a developer for as much as he can get. So, chances are that the land will get a house or two built on it in the near future.
Our potential purchase has a small garden, and the many windows at the rear would now look onto a new house and garden, rather than the nice wooded paddock.
So, what to do? It appears that our options are to:
- run away
- lower our offer (hard to tell how much by, as this is all conjecture at the moment as the local plan hasn't been agreed, no developer has purchased the land and no permissions have been applied for)
- go ahead anyway, it's still a lovely house
- something involving estate agents that hold back on the truth, bombers and wee in shoes. (Not really a standalone option, this can be in conjunction with one of the above)
Opinions of the STW NIMBY brigade would be welcome.
Any undeveloped land can be developed, always a lottery. Would you have still offered on the house if they'd been a house already built instead of the paddock?
And remember that the Estate Agent works for the seller, not the buyer. 🙄
Assume they will be built and reduce your offer to what you'd pay if they were there today and a wee bit more for the inconvenience you'll have living next to a building site. How much less and how inconvenient only you can decide.
Ultimately it could be 10 years before the bulldozers arrive.
This is the paddock above my unsupported caverenfull of ebola riddled whale carcasses?
Buy the paddock and the house 😆
Look on the brightside, you will have more neighbours to keep up with.
Isn't that the number one pastime in Surrey?
🙂
The next government is quite likely to let the builders go rip at full speed ahead - housing is already in crisis and fast becoming an electoral issue.
London is now unaffordable to even the well paid middle classes, who've started moving to the home counties in even greater numbers that previously...
So you have a landowner who's keen to sell for development, pressure to change NIMBY planning laws and a massive demand for more housing.
I wouldn't buy the house if you don't like the idea of the paddock being given over to a developer in the next couple of years. After all, you've chosen to live there so it's clearly an attractive place to be!
Torys are promiisng 20 thousand new affordable homes for chav tory supporters, so look forward to your new tory neighbours.
but they have little chance of wining so it will probably be sold to ALDI.
How do you know it'll be houses built on the land? - maybe it'll be a block of flats over looking your lounge.
My advice is to run away. I live/lived in a cul de sac. There was a house with a paddock and tennis court at the end. This was sold and 48 yes 48 houses have, over the last two years, been built there. I won't lie it has been hell. We are moving this spring/summer.
Thanks for the input, all helpful stuff (with the possible exception of the Ebola-ridden-whale-carcass-filled cavern, but I'd believe anything of estate agents so I'll check for that while I'm at it).
Sadly buying house and paddock is a non-starter, the landowner has a pretty good idea of what the land is worth to a developer, and I don't have a developer's budget, or indeed any budget beyond buying the house!
The local planning people seem to be pretty hot on what is and isn't allowed in terms of style, size, character etc for new dwellings, but pressures for development might mean that this will change in time. The plot isn't massive so it wouldn't be a huge development, and almost certainly wouldn't be a block of flats. Still, I don't really want to have to look at a building site for the next few years.
Food for thought... Thanks.
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I quite like it. 🙂
The price you are paying includes a nice view 😆
The price if and when you come to sell it with a development of my kind near it could be somewhat less 💡
This could or could not happen in your lifetime ...
[quote=djtom ]- lower our offer (hard to tell how much by, as this is all conjecture at the moment as the local plan hasn't been agreed, no developer has purchased the land and no permissions have been applied for)
Sites don't tend to get taken out of draft local plans - not unless there is some extremely good reason to do so, and if there was you'd probably have heard about it. The fact it hasn't been sold is totally irrelevant - developers tend to buy land with permission in place, even if it's the developers who apply for permission (with an option on the land). Neither does the lack of planning permission mean anything - if it's going in the local plan it will get permission.
So I'm afraid it's only conjecture from a technical POV - almost certain that you will get houses there.