owning a woodland

Instead of spending £200k on a patch of woodland that your family might enjoy, could it be worth looking at cashing in your assets in the expensive SE and moving somewhere cheaper?

You could buy a house (near a forest where your family can spend time together) for much less money and use your equity to reduce your working hours (i.e. work part -time).

Win-win. More family time, less stress and better riding than in the SE?

Your wife is right in many ways. It will be an expensive asset but it I would argue it would be sellable to someone, eventually. Not wanting to to be too contrary to some of the advice offered but as a woodland owner myself the amount of ‘maintenance’ it requires is exactly the amount you’re willing to put in. I lost 40 or so trees to Arwen, many are still down/hanging in the woods. So what? It’s a woods. The animals don’t care, the other trees don’t care. Extracting them is a time consuming and dangerous process so Im not going in all guns blazing, but thats just fine as it will still be there in a year/10 years/100 years time. The only loser is me as the firewood value of those trees ebbs away with time.

But that all said – with the restrictions you listed on these woods it’s likely that doing anything enjoyable needs a permit or is barred. You won’t own them – you just were the unlucky sod that bought them for everyone else to look at it would seem. My first call would be to the local forestry/woodlands officer to clarify just what can be done.

our boys are the perfect age to make great use of it for 15 years, and another site is unlikely to come up. The vague idea was to use it then move it on with relatively little loss.

£200k just so your kids can play in a wood!?

Kids want to play where their mates are. They don’t knock around in woods like we used to do in the 70s. And even then we’d get bored of wood (a) and move to wood (b) for the next school holidays. Then we progressed to quarries! 🙂

I dont have a wood, but i do have farmland.

£200k, for an ‘ancient’ wood, on the side of a steep hill, in a national park, which is an SSSI and not particularly local to you.

No, No, No.

Our thinking is more opportunity lost than anything else, our boys are the perfect age to make great use of it for 15 years, and another site is unlikely to come up

You could do an awful lot of other stuff with £200k!  Putting that sort of money into probably a one-trick pony seems ‘brave’ – you could spend much less and create some proper family memories combining travel and biking.
I have a concern: What happens if/when the novelty wears off for the boys?  You are putting a large amount of money into something that may not interest them in a couple of years* ….. then what?
Another concern would be being held liable if someone starts using the woodland without your knowledge and then falls out of a tree or injuring themselves in some way.
Would owning this land tie you into living in the same area while you still have it?
On the plus side, as my Dad once said, they’re not making it (land) any more….. may as well buy some while you can!
* As the father of 3 girls now in their early 20’s I can guarantee that most of the things I thought they’d want to do in their childhood never actually happened simply because they wanted to do something else!  By the time your boys are 17 they will have discovered, beer, cars and girls – and will soon be off to Uni.

It’s the latest middle/ professional class status symbol isn’t it? Or so I’ve read once.   Woodland ownership but families for pleasure apparently took off during covid.  I must admit it appeals, those of us that are outdoorsy, and a certain age…. its all a bit shallows and amazon’s and yes I love the idea of owning my own bit of wood close by, but only if I was relatively free to do what I wanted with it.   There’s no fun if you can’t thin it easily,  build some paths whether for walking,  biking or quad, build a tree house,  a den,  make a camp fire.    With those restrictions it seems its not for you,  or me.   In reality there isn’t one for me and although my kids enjoy a walk in one of the closely pockets of wood,  they get bored if there too often.   It’s a lovely dream though….a bit of Woodland…..by a lake….idyllic!

Another thing to consider – if this wood can be fairly easily accessed from a road then fly-tippers will love it. A wood that no-one is looking after will soon be spotted and you as the land-owner would be responsible for the clear-up costs.

I nearly bought a wood once. Bid did’nt quite make it.

In hindsight I’m glad it fell through.

I’m still riding/walking around the same wood now … Well over 25 years later.

I still would like a wood, but now find the actual ownership and bullshit fencing abhorant.

Different view now on remote/massive acre land ownership.

Why can’t I enjoy a wood in the village I live, that is Owned by someone on the other side of the world. Especially when the obnoxious Private signs appear everywhere.

1066 :-(. Probably the same before.

Humans are obsessed with land, and know your place;-)

If I had a woodland I would build a rudimentary shelter and simply go and sit in it. It beats a bog standard living room.

If looking for the woodland feel, but dont want to buy the woodland. In Scotland (and very near me in one Wood) there is the ‘Hutting’ communities – think Dachas.

Hutting

Do they have similar in England?

I think it’s called Cottaging

My wife’s worried they wouldn’t get into it and we’d just end up with an expensive asset that’s difficult to sell

I think she’s probably right, although calling it an “asset” is a bit of a stretch given you can’t improve it in any way or earn any money from it. £200k is just bananas. If you ever wanted or needed to sell it, who would buy it? £20k, maybe!!

Is it in the Clayton – Offham SSSI?

so lots of people are focussing on the asking price, which is why I didn’t mention it in the OP. To be clear, we don’t have this kind of money, but we could raise it fairly easily as a mortgage against our house. My thinking is that if land prices continue to rise roughly in line with the rate of interest (which isn’t gauranteed, but is a risk I’m comfortable with), and we don’t have to sell it in a hurry, it’ll basically be “free” to own it over 15 years or whatever, aside from the cost/time in maintaining it, hence my post.

We could move somewhere else, but with lower costs come lower wages so I’m not convinced we’d be able to work significantly less than we do today, and anyway, we like it here, which is why we’re considering investing in a second bunch of property in the area.

You could do an awful lot of other stuff with £200k!

you could, but most of it would depreciate towards being worth nothing. The idea of this was that it costs a total of maybe a grand or 2 per year. Its not a great investment, sure, but its not like buying a new ferrari or some horses.

Kids want to play where their mates are.

yeah the idea is all their mates would pile round too, its easily walkable from the village.

£200k, for an ‘ancient’ wood, on the side of a steep hill, in a national park, which is an SSSI and not particularly local to you.

I don’t think any of those things are deal breakers (I think a mile and a half is pretty local as they come) except for the SSSI. Steep hill is great for riding (the bottom bit is on the “floor” of the valley so there’s plenty of flat woods to hang out in too)

if this wood can be fairly easily accessed from a road then fly-tippers will love it

a good thought, but fortunately I think the risk is low – to get to the woods you have to drive down a ~1 mile singletrack lane that is a favourite for fly tippers, but the entrance to the wood is ~20 yards (with a straight line of site) from a house (that I think used to own it) – so a fly tipper would have to drive their rattly transit all the way down a nice secluded lane and tip in front of someones front door.

Hutting

Do they have similar in England?

Never heard of that but I’ll look into it. My guess is the land round here is generally too populated for it to exist – there’s probably some outside of the south east but once something is a few hours away its use becomes really tricky

Clayton – Offham SSSI?

hah, it was only an amount of time till someone figured it out, yes. Its Clayton Holt

there’s already a bunch of structures in there with various levels of trashed-ness (including one that had running water and a shower at some point), a couple of reasonable sheds – and one very old looking stone “cottage” (ie a single room maybe 15′ x 10′) with reasonable roof and a log burner. I don’t think I’d have to build\construct anything

our boys are the perfect age to make great use of it for 15 years, and another site is unlikely to come up. The vague idea was to use it then move it on with relatively little loss.

Porn is easily accessible on phones nowadays – there’s no need for your lads to go feverishly searching round the woods for discarded dog eared Razzles or Readers wife hedge porn like we did in the 80’s

Parcels of woodland are a vanity fashion lifestyle statement, not an investment. It may go up, as tulips did once, but it’s not an “investment” in the conventional sense, it’s more like a monkey gif NFT. You’re relying on a greater fool for resale value, not the intrinsic return on the investment.

If it was commercially viable with a turnover and profit, that would be a different matter.

I would perhaps advise a consultation with a Land Management Consultant to get the finer detail of what you can/cant do and your responsibilities with respects to potential burdens/covenants etc.
Most give the first hour free. Maybe worth paying for a few hours of their time to discuss SSSI etc. More in depth info than what can get from an internet forum/Google scraping.

Perhaps there is income potential such as ‘Cottaging’ etc, or further development/value add of the already existing structures.

Then armed with all the info, determine if the purchase is right for you.

This is the one I was (very briefly) considering. Luckily someone has bought it, so no longer an issue!

https://www.woods4sale.co.uk/woodlands/central-west-england/2132.htm

3,5 miles from my house. Not too bad if I was really keen.

> >>> but it’s not an “investment” in the conventional sense

I was under the impression that’s exactly what amenity woodland has become since it’s exempt from capital gains tax. It’s value is pretty intangible, just as long as the next person will pay a bit more for it.

My thinking is that if land prices continue to rise roughly in line with the rate of interest (which isn’t gauranteed, but is a risk I’m comfortable with), and we don’t have to sell it in a hurry, it’ll basically be “free” to own it over 15 years or whatever, aside from the cost/time in maintaining it

That’s possibly a fairly big assumption given that it’s woodland with very limited potential use.  Anyway….. if it’s that easy I’m surprised more people aren’t doing it – especially when you say that you don’t think they’ll get £200k for it?

It sounds like quite a lot of self-justification going on, but it’s your money so fill your boots!

Out of interest and slightly off-topic, but how did those of you that have posted in this thread who own woodlands end up with a spare £50-200k to buy one in the first place!?

we don’t have this kind of money, but we could raise it fairly easily as a mortgage against our house.

The monthly payments on a mortgage would be >£1000/month (15yr mortgage) – how is it only going to cost you £1-£2k/year?  If you actually had £200k spare it would make in the region of £110k in interest over the same period….. a mortgage is going to cost more!

It wasn’t as expensive as that.

Savings, no mortgage, and not spending much.

Out of interest and slightly off-topic, but how did those of you that have posted in this thread who own woodlands end up with a spare £50-200k to buy one in the first place!?

Odd question, I should imagine there is all sorts of ways, inheritance, downsizing, pension draw down, savings, selling family silver, not spunking £££ on having the latest cars & gizmos.

Out of interest and slightly off-topic, but how did those of you that have posted in this thread who own woodlands end up with a spare £50-200k to buy one in the first place!?

in our case the plan is just to raise it against the mortgage on our house.

The monthly payments on a mortgage would be >£1000/month (15yr mortgage) – how is it only going to cost you £1-£2k/year? If you actually had £200k spare it would make in the region of £110k in interest over the same period….. a mortgage is going to cost more!

the only cost is the interest you’re paying on the mortgage. Any equity you’re paying in is money you get right back out when you sell it, so can be excluded.

Long term land prices rise by around 5% per year (source -> https://www.savills.co.uk/landing-pages/rural-land-values/rural-land-values.aspx) – as long as my interest rate is below 5% per year, the money I spend on interest (say 4% of 200k, over 10 years, which is £80k) is recovered when the land sells for 5% per annum more than I paid for it (£125k profit, minus various taxes) – the net gain in that example would be £45k minus costs

Now aminity woodland isn’t quite as easy to value as farmland or a farmed forest, but its probably a reasonable assumption that it follows similar trends – there’s risk there, but one I’m happy to take. I don’t think its the same as an NFT as there is value in holding the land, my family and I will get personal pleasure from our use of it, as the current owners have, and as the next owners have, but it’s correct to say that I can only sell it for what the next person is willing to pay. A bit like a house, car, shares, or anything else you can buy

“Access is good, there’s a road up to the fence, and”

And do you have Right of Way over this road?

I looked at buying some woodland a few years back. Access was usually a problem…

the only cost is the interest you’re paying on the mortgage.

And the ongoing maintenance costs – because it will need maintenance! You’ll need public liability insurance too as a minimum.

The fact you are borrowing against your house makes it an even crazier idea IMO.

And do you have Right of Way over this road?

its apparently a shared driveway (I’d assume shared between the house, which is split in 3, and the woods) as the gravel parking spot is apparently dedicated to the woods, but this is something that we’d obviously have to check.

Pinged a few emails out, Natural England (who enforce SSSI) won’t talk to me about whether I’d be able to put a “path” in as I’m not the owner, and the estate agents are denying its in an SSSI (I’ve gone back with evidence suggesting otherwise), so unsurprisingly it looks like a right ballache.

its apparently a shared driveway

…so that’s shared driveway maintenance too! 🙂

Your not buying it from this person are you?

A friend has done this by accident. She bought it to start a forest school, but no business plan or planning permission in place. So ended up with an expensive piece of woodland she cannot afford to properly maintain several miles away from home. The mortgage is crippling her financially (extended house mortgage to be able to buy the land).
She would be selling at a loss, and yet can’t really afford to keep or maintain it. It’s used maybe a once or twice a month for a few hours at most, as there are no amenities to use- no toilet, water etc.
she thought she would be able to camp on it, just her and a friend – but even that isn’t allowed and neighbours are very quick to report.
I think the advise would be research, research, research and yet more research, and think of it as money lost not an investment.

And…..

it is in a really awkward place to get any vehicle bigger than a small family car too. It’s on a very steep incline and the wood isn’t of great quality. Everything in and out would be manual labour, no machinery would be able to gain access. She simply can’t afford to get it logged, cleared and replanted. The land cannot was used for anything else.
Basically she would need one of the neighbouring houses to want to buy it to add to their already big gardens, which given they sold it to her, probably isn’t going to happen, unless any new owner wants it back.

Amenity woodland

Please dont rush or make hasty decisions. £200k of borrowed money is a lot of dough. As Mervin King BoE governor once said ‘property prices are speculative, but debt is real’.

And the ongoing maintenance costs – because it will need maintenance! You’ll need public liability insurance too as a minimum.

right, which was the entire point of this thread, to get actual info from people who’ve done a similar thing. Liability insurance is pretty cheap as there’s no rights of way – in the region of a couple of hundred quid

The fact you are borrowing against your house makes it an even crazier idea IMO.

its just a cheap line of credit. We can easily afford the mortgage, its much less than we used to have on the house, so don’t see it as a significant issue.

so that’s shared driveway maintenance too! 🙂

there’s potentially some, for sure, but its not too long (couple hundred meters), tarmac’d, in good nick, and has light traffic, so I’d be surprised if it needed a huge amount of spend.

Clayton Holt? I stared building, then gave up on, a cheeky trail in there 😉

I think you need to really understand the costs/risks.   You assume the farmers will fix the neighbouring fences, but those fences may be there to protect “your” wood rather than their field.  AFAIK we’ve mostly given up on trying to contain ash dieback, but it will still need thought about – you presumably don’t want trunks/branches falling on your kids, and once its cut down I think there are still rules on what you can do with the wood?  Ash dieback is not the only plant pathogen though – some of the others are less common but because we try to contain them are potentially more problematic if you OR A NEIGHBOUR gets them – I think you can be ordered to fell trees, put biosecurity in place etc.

the only cost is the interest you’re paying on the mortgage. Any equity you’re paying in is money you get right back out when you sell it, so can be excluded.

Presumably you’ve not had this conversation with a financial adviser?

Long term land prices rise by around 5% per year (source -> https://www.savills.co.uk/landing-pages/rural-land-values/rural-land-values.aspx) – as long as my interest rate is below 5% per year, the money I spend on interest (say 4% of 200k, over 10 years, which is £80k) is recovered when the land sells for 5% per annum more than I paid for it (£125k profit, minus various taxes) – the net gain in that example would be £45k minus costs

Once you deduct capital gains, stamp duty, legal fees, insurance, repairs/tools etc you might eat up a lot of that surplus!  Many financial advisors would say that if you can afford £8K per annum on an “investment” the best place to put it would be your pension (the gov would effectively turn it into about 11+ before you do anything, then over 10 years you might expect it to grow to be probably £150K+.  That might mean you can retire earlier or have more cash to enjoy in retirement with your grown up kids or grandkids.

Now aminity woodland isn’t quite as easy to value as farmland or a farmed forest, but its probably a reasonable assumption that it follows similar trends – there’s risk there, but one I’m happy to take.

As a general trend it might be a valid assumption, but what matters is what happens to the value of that land in the next 10 years not a general trend.  I can see lots of things impacting that – e.g. acceptance of wood-fired heating, local developments / local authority development plan – and the neighbouring land, changes to government rules on SSSI or Ancient Woodland, policy changes on “right to roam” (or even hints at it), tax incentives or otherwise for owning certain types of land, availability of grant support for certain types of land management.  Now those could all help the value or hinder it.

I don’t think its the same as an NFT as there is value in holding the land, my family and I will get personal pleasure from our use of it, as the current owners have, and as the next owners have, but it’s correct to say that I can only sell it for what the next person is willing to pay. A bit like a house, car, shares, or anything else you can buy

Its probably not quite as crazy as NFT in that its unlikely that to be worth zero when you come to sell, but its definitely not an investment I’d be borrowing to make.  If I had a million pound inheritance I’d maybe consider it… You’ve already said you think £200K is overpriced (on some definitions it definitely is but as open market value it may not be as someone in SE England will have too much money and a clever tax efficient way to own woods with it – not borrowing to do it!).  Never buy and asset you think is over values just because currently other people seem to think its worth more too.

My personal opinion is that remortgaging your house in a high interest rate environment (with falling house prices) in order to buy a woodland (that’s probably also falling in value, in the near term at least) on a steep slope that’s a SSSI with limited timber value or shooting potential is a really really bad idea.

this is very close to me https://assets.reapit.net/stp/live/pdf.php?p=JCC230006&t=S

half the size, half the price. Still south east.

it’s been on the market a year. It’s in an AONB, next to an SSSI. It includes a scheduled ancient monument. On a steep hill, limited access. Bridle way next to it.

You will never be able to build on it, over and above the two derelict structures on there (and they are really at the four walls only stage of derelict).

I know the bloke next door, and asked what it was like (and have had a couple of cheeky looks myself). He suggested not touching it with a bargepole. We have a vast amount of Ash Dieback here (another neighbour has taken down ~400 trees, with more to come, and the NT are forever lopping things down. Great for the wood burner, less for the scenery).

It is a lovely quiet wood at the moment, with a large amount of wildlife. But owning it, and having responsibility for it? No. But then i’m lucky enough to have a reasonable garden, in a quiet area, with a lot of trees already. Others may not be that lucky.

This steep hill…how stable is it…and how techniclly robust is that determination?

See that road labelled Under Hill Road…it’s under your hill…..if there was to be a landslip from your hill causing damage to that road and the properties below…how liable are you?… see ‘Undercliff Drive’ in the IOW.

That’s the question with my profesional engineering geologist hat on.

With my high horse hat on…you want to borrow money (so keeping the wheels of an economy based on infinite growth at all costs (including the environment) greased) to ‘buy’ land that you don’t need to live, off someone. Where did that person get the land from?….somewhere down the line it’s been stolen. …What you are buying is something that you don’t need, that you will never actually really deep down own with money that you don’t have which essentially that comes from destroying nature..’ The Commons’…(to use the principles outlined in ‘Sacred Economics’ etc).

Does it prevent someone/ something else taking it and destroying it?

I’ll get down off that horse now….I don’t really like it up there….devil’s advocate etc etc.

I wonder if you could pay a landowner to rent a corner of the forest for your shelter and fire circle?

It’s chalk downland – very low chance of slippage.

There are plenty of woods on the other side of the A273 that your kids cloud play in anyaway.

A bit like a house, car, shares, or anything else you can buy

Not at all, and that was the point I was making. Shares mean you own a share in a company that (usually) makes a profit and returns something like 3-5% pa to shareholders. There’s a risk it will go bust but there is also a reasonable expectation that it’s going to keep on making money. A house is pretty much a distress purchase, *everyone* has to have somewhere to live and the supply is artificially suppressed by various policies.

A monkey gif is just a monkey gif that has no intrinsic value or return whatsoever. Sure, you still might make a fat profit if someone decides to pay even more than you did, but it’s 100% based on the greater fool concept with no other measurable return on the investment whatsoever. I wonder how the owners of monkey gifs currently feel about their “investments”?

Of course the OP can spunk £200k on a status symbol – people do sillier things – but there’s a big risk they’ll find the resale market rather illiquid for such a niche product.