Help with buying land from neighbour in uk

[jade]

Hello,

I am looking for some advice about buying a small plot of land from our neighbours. We have a 2 bed cottage in the south East, UK worth approx £180-200k. We currently have a small strange shaped garden, like a thin wedge shaped path.

Some new people have bought the house and garden next door to do up, their garden being large but also a strange shape where it flares out where ours wedges. Its currently overgrown. We indicated we were interested in buying some of their garden and we're in negotiations to straighten the boundary to make our garden a bit larger and a more regular shape which would make our garden better and help with resale. The land bought would also be a wedge making the new garden roughly rectangular and the land for us to buy would be 40 foot long and 10 foot wide (currently 3ft wide at this point) at the widest part (end) going to 0 at the narrowest point. I hope that makes sense! It also has a large tree stump in it we'll need to grind down.

They firstly indicated that they would want us to pay for new fencing (legally their responsibility) for the length and pay all legal fees (in total looking in the region of 1.5k) but have further indicated that they want to be paid for the land too.

We wanted to get some advice? Any thoughts? If appropriate, reasonable offers on this? We don't want to insult them or pay over the odds either though obviously.

Thanks!

[bill1827]

They firstly indicated that they would want us to pay for new fencing (legally their responsibility) for the length and pay all legal fees (in total looking in the region of 1.5k) but have further indicated that they want to be paid for the land too.

Those all seem eminently reasonable requests to me. They are unlikely to have a legal obligation to fence their land, but it is reasonable for them to want you to pay for a fence if you did buy the land.

It is also reasonable to expect payment for the land, how much is the difficult bit. If the area's big enough to put a house on, or is going to make your garden big enough to put a house on you will be looking at multiple 10s of thousands. If it's just a bit of garden with no potential, then I would still expect them to want a few thousand. After all, you're the one who benefits and you're in the SE were land is stupidly expensive.

[jade]

Thanks bill1827, its good to get your take on it. We have a fence at the current boundary but it could do with being replaced anyway. The land they're selling won't be large enough for a house, its a long thin wedge but will make our garden a fairly normal shape for our type of house. Useful to think it  would be a few thousand, we'll just need to work out where to start negotiations. Appreciate your thoughts.

[ExitViaTheCashRamp]

 If I have understood correctly, they are temporary owners (do it up & sell it on). So they only have one consideration, will your offer be greater than they lose from the future sale price + all costs. I think the best you can do is maybe haggle down a small percentage of their figure, haggle too hard and they will find it not worth their time & effort. I would suggest also confirming your fencing ideas is the same as theirs (maybe they want brick ? Some shaped stone to match the house ?)

 This is a sellers market, it is not like you can buy alternative land to add to your garden - so I think you should decide how much in £££ it is really worth to you and see if they will meet that figure.

[jade]

If I have understood correctly, they are temporary owners (do it up & sell it on). So they only have one consideration, will your offer be greater than they lose from the future sale price + all costs. I think the best you can do is maybe haggle down a small percentage of their figure, haggle too hard and they will find it not worth their time & effort. I would suggest also confirming your fencing ideas is the same as theirs (maybe they want brick ? Some shaped stone to match the house ?)

 This is a sellers market, it is not like you can buy alternative land to add to your garden - so I think you should decide how much in £££ it is really worth to you and see if they will meet that figure.

That's right. We've had some estimates and  have an idea were to start negotiations now. We've discussed fencing and agreed that. Thanks for your input.

[former player]

Slightly different, but a surveyor/valuer recently suggested to me that giving a neighbour a right to park on my land (they have a very restricted vehicular access otherwise) would be worth about £5k plus my conveyancing costs and costs of marking out the area.  Which sounds pretty similar to where you already are on yours.  The neighbours who are doing up their house might put quite a lot of value on the new fence and on not having to clear that part of the land.  If you are having trouble reaching an agreement on the price of the land, perhaps agreeing to clear their land as well as your new bit might help?  It sounds as though they might not be gardeners and will have a lot of other work on their hands so that sort of offer might be worth more than the straight monetary cost to them.

Definitely agree that all the conveyancing costs and fencing costs would traditionally be on the buyer in this situation and that trying to upset that expectation might well lose you the land altogether.