Buying land to build a house

[JapanRed]

We’ve been tentatively keeping an eye on the market for 6-9 months now, in the search of land to build a house. We’ve only been looking on Rightmove - is there anywhere else I should be looking as literally nothing suitable is coming up in our area? All we keep seeing is little bits of land in stty villages for £100k or land going for £1M in really expensive places.

Our budget would be £200-400k for the land which should be acceptable for the areas we are looking in. Am I missing something?

[JapanRed]

joshcowin said:

Speak to agents? Look at land auctions?

What agents? Estate agents or specialists? Can you point me in the direction of land auctions I didn’t know they existed.

Equus said:

I've said it before, but Rule 1 of self-building is that any plot of land being marketed as such is already grossly overpriced.

It is possible to find suitable land at very low cost (sometimes even effectively 'free'), but it's not easy: it requires knowledge, legwork, determination and effort.

Thanks. Can you expand upon this?

TooMany2cvs said:

I guess all those plots have outline PP?

As well as looking at plots that don't currently have PP, are you looking at existing houses that you could demolish?

Yeah most of them already have outline PP. we have considered existing houses that could be demolished but they all seem to be expensive. We are keen to live in a “nice/desirable” village and have a decent garden. All these houses seem to be £500k+ and that’s before we knock down and build again. Guess we might one day drop on a small house/bungalow with a big garden in a nice location but haven’t seen anything yet.

[JapanRed]

JonChalk said:

For that budget, what about buying a pile of crap in a good location and demolishing it to start again.

Less risky for PP (though not guaranteed) as a dwelling already existed.

I would do this but they are harder to come by than you would imagine. I’m hoping to drop on a bungalow sat on a large parcel of land but can’t find much. Even the old bungalows that need renovating are £500-750k when sat on loads of land.

[JapanRed]

Equus said:

desolate said:

It's not desperate if you are prepared to do without a large part of the developers profit.

Some people just want a house that is "theirs"

Well, that's their decision, of course, but it effectively means that they are paying above the market rate to do so. And if they're more astute, they need not pay that penalty.

But it's a valid point: one of the questions that the OP needs to reflect on long and hard is why he wants to self-build.

It's not the easy option, and can end up costing you a lot more.

Some great info in this thread thanks all.

I think I just want a house that’s a bit different, and fits my needs. Ideally want something with character, and with a few outbuildings and nice views and big gardens. We are an outdoorsy family and love our large south facing garden. Our house was (almost) perfect when we moved in but since our first child has come along with more planned in future, it’s not going to be big enough. We have good sized front and rear gardens, a garage and importantly, no one overlooking us. We want the same thing but with a bigger internal space (4bed + office as opposed to 3 bed with no office). Would like a triple garage or more. And don’t want to be overlooked by loads of other houses.

I’m not desperate to self build but it does seem the only way we will get the house we want (appreciate there will be compromises regardless of which route we take).

[JapanRed]

ben5575 said:

desolate said:

It's not desperate if you are prepared to do without a large part of the developers profit.

Some people just want a house that is "theirs"

I agree with this. You only have to read any of the property threads on here to see the constant dithering and obsession over values as people's lives continue to tick by, unhappy with their circumstances. It really is a weird obsession in this country.

Profit on a self build is a bonus. If it's your raison d'etre, then you're a developer. As above, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to make some profit if you're clever about it (and you should be clever about it), but then I suppose I could make a profit on a car if I was clever about it and never actually enjoyed or drove the thing. What's wrong with 'losing' (some might say spending or even investing...) £200k or whatever to build and live in the house of your family's dreams for the rest of your life? Perspective.

I’m not desperate to make a profit on a self build. We want the house of our dreams to enhance our lives not our bank accounts. We will likely live there for 30 years anyway so over that time period we will struggle to not at least break even.

[JapanRed]

blueg33 said:

A whole thread on buying land, and i haven't commented yet, I must be busy.

I know the thread has drifted more towards the build but back to land finding:

1. Find it yourself, don't rely on agents
2. Planning registers, google maps and land registry are your main tools
3. Work out where you want to be, get in the car go there, get out of the car wear out shoe leather, knock on doors
4. Be prepared, its never as simple as it looks
5. First time doing this, 100th time doing this - you WILL get the costs wrong have a contingency
6. Always use an option or a contract conditional on planning
7. Always make sure you can get drainage and services to the site and you know how much it will cost
8. Try and avoid the need for foul water pumping and always avoid storm water pumping
9. For planning USE A PLANNING CONSULTANT, I cant say that loudly enough, don't use an architect, don't use a CAD technician, don't use your local flower seller USE A PLANNING CONSULTANT.
10. Be prepared to spend several tens of £k's to get a site to planning, it may cost less but it may not.
11. Do market research, what will the final property be worth, try not to spend more than that!
12. Everyone is development and especially land owners are motivated by greed - remember this in all negotiations




Small fact - Frogmore Estates are one of the UK's largest developers/land owners, they started when the CEO rode to work on the top deck on a bus and realised he could see small plots of land with garages on etc behind rows of houses. he knocked on door until he found the owner, he entered conditional contracts. He is now quite wealthy.

Great post thank you so much.
I love watching grand designs but hate to see people run out of money all the time. We are in a fortunate position finance wise it’s just finding the land that’s hard.

There’s obviously a lot of land that’s empty near us in Yorkshire (close to A1/M62) and we’ve drove round and used google maps. But what exactly are we looking for? Even if I could knock on a land owners door how do I know which parcels of land are more likely to gain PP?

[JapanRed]

desolate said:

JapanRed said:

Great post thank you so much.
I love watching grand designs but hate to see people run out of money all the time. We are in a fortunate position finance wise it’s just finding the land that’s hard.

There’s obviously a lot of land that’s empty near us in Yorkshire (close to A1/M62) and we’ve drove round and used google maps. But what exactly are we looking for? Even if I could knock on a land owners door how do I know which parcels of land are more likely to gain PP?

Leg work and research - if you are looking for a greenbelt type property then it's massively difficult, and expensive in terms of time and money.

Is it a grand design, house in a field type project you are looking for?

edit: just seen the "not overlooked" part. Very tricky. I'd engage with a planning consultant now and spend a few quid on a proper meeting as they will be able to go into detail and give you a lot of background knowledge to help you with a search

Edited by desolate on Thursday 18th October 14:32

Thanks Desolate. Just googled “planning consultant” and got loads of hits. Does it have to be one close to me? Do you know if any that come recommended in the Leeds area? How do I choose a planning consultant?

[JapanRed]

Equus said:

JapanRed said:

... and importantly, no one overlooking us.

That, in itself, is going to make life difficult.

The Planning system is fundamentally set against isolated dwellings (which by definition will almost always be in what the Planners consider to be open countryside).

The only exceptions are Paragraph 79, a replacement dwelling (and then, depending on the LPA, there might be limits on the size of the new dwelling), or a Class Q conversion.

Class Q probably won't help you if your needs are so specific, so you're very much being led toward either a replacement dwelling or a Para 79.

I've got a self-build client near Woodhall Spa who has just commenced construction on a house that would probably meet your needs perfectly (though it's probably a lot bigger than you would want, at 5 beds, about 5,200ft2 floor area plus garages and stables), who has gone down the replacement dwelling route. In that case, the Planner didn't flinch at our making it more than treble the size of the existing house, despite the LPA having a policy of max. 15% increase, IIRC.

What is your total budget (not just for land)?



You could get your home office and triple garage in one fell swoop by buying a 4 bed that otherwise meets your requirements and building a triple garage with room-in-roof above, of course.

Thanks again for some very insightful info. Ironically we don’t want to be in the middle of the countryside away from all other dwellings. We don’t want to be too isolated. Our perfect scenario would be on the edge of a nice little village, one that has a pub and a post office. There’s a few such villages near us but houses don’t come up very often and if they do they aren’t suitable for one reason or another.

Ideally wanted to spend £750k total but if we bought the land and then built over a period of 1-2 years we could go higher to maybe £900k or £1M. Is this a reasonable budget? It seems a lot to me but appreciate you might turn round and say “no not a chance unless you’ve got £1M+“.

What is your job Equus? I wouldn’t mind paying for some decent advice.

One more question; if we bought a house at £400k, how much would it typically cost to knock down and remove all rubble? I’m thinking an average sized 3-4 bed detached house.

[JapanRed]

garyhun said:

Japan - you could demolish and remove a house for around £10,000.

Not trying to be funny but you really should be doing a lot of background reading on all this. The more you know, the more you can question the right people about the right things

Go on amazon and purchase “The Housebuilder’s Bible” - you won’t regret it.

Thanks Gary, I'll get that book ordered from Amazon tonight.

Equus said:

Edge of village location is a mixed blessing... in some respects it can make Planning easier (if you can justify that it's a natural extension to the development boundary), in other respects it doesn't make much difference (as I mentioned above, LPA's won't generally support development in small 'unsustainable' settlements any more than they will in open countryside) and in certain circumstances it can actually make things more difficult (it's a bizarre use of semantics, but I've seen it successfully argued that the wording of Para 55/79 makes clear that it applies to isolated dwellings in open countryside, and that a lack of sufficient isolation is actually grounds for refusal!).

Overall budget is important because, as you might have gathered from discussion above, the land for a Para 55/79 approach can be dirt cheap (at agricultural land values, or less), but the design and construction costs usually aren't. £750K-£900K is reasonable, though. The house I mentioned above is being done with a build budget of £475K (which worries me a lot), but that excludes land and stables/garage block, and the client is very hands-on and doing a lot of the actual construction himself.

Demolitions costs can vary enormously, depending on all sorts of factors, but are likely to be a relatively trivial cost in terms of your overall project budget. Allow maybe £10K as an initial budget figure.

My job: I am Director of a combined planning and architectural design consultancy. As it happens, I'm from pretty close to where you're intending to build, originally (I was born and raised in Rothwell, South of Leeds), and go back fairly regularly to see friends and family, so give me a shout if you're serious about the project.

Small world Equus, I'm probably 10 minutes from you in Pontefract. I'll PM you later today. Thanks again.