What are you looking for, and how do you hope to get it?
Ways to get land
Wait for it to be advertised on the open market, and go through the normal process of purchasing it.
Go searching for a suitable property and pile in with what may be an amazing opportunity for the current owner.
Find a piece of land that is part of a bigger holding and split this off and purchase this.
Come to an arrangement with someone who has more land than they need.
Adverse possession.
The first three will apply to the potential buyers, the last two to the squatters.
Wait for it to be advertised on the open market, and go through the normal process of purchasing.
This is the simple bit, you have the resources available, you know where you want to move to and you just have to wait for the right property to come along.
And that is where the difficulty may be that whatever property comes along may well not be where you wanted to be, the type of house and buildings that you’re looking for, the amount of land you’re hoping to buy.
The vast majority of people that I’ve known who buy smallholdings have ended up with some kind of compromise on some level simply because they had to take whatever the market had to offer at that time.
Another difficulty with this process is that people have been buying smallholdings in the countryside for the last 20 to 30 years, and bringing in income and resources to do it. So if you want to spend an absolute fortune buying a beautifully maintained smallholding along with a couple of letting units etc then realistically this is probably the most common type of smallholding you will often find. However, what if you are looking for a project? What if you want to have something that you can put your own stamp onto, where you can decide how to do things.
And of course, what if you don’t actually have very deep pockets.
The types of properties that have been relatively and toast have been becoming rarer and rarer over time. So if you want one of these then you will need to either find it or just grab and put unity as on when it arrives. kind of makes it a bit hit and miss really.
I recently started to search for a property for someone with very specific requirements. One of these was being close to the sea. I have been looking at the area he wants, but the vast majority of the type of properties in that area have already been bought, most being converted to holiday accommodation, and their value and condition reflects this. Suffice to say I am struggling.
Go searching for a suitable property and pile in with what may be an amazing opportunity for the current owner.
This to me is one of the potential uses for the information in this guide. If you go into any estate agent there will always be any number of properties available, but as noted above, relatively few these are now at the lower end of the price range of the market, they’ve mostly had lots of work done, and you basically get whatever is available at the time that you have the resources available.
If you managed to find exactly the kind of property you’re looking for in exactly the place you want it at exactly the right time then quite frankly I would be amazed.
The other way to do this is to decide exactly what it is that you want, find it using the skill set that I am outlining in this guide, or perhaps consider using somebody like me to search out a suitable property for you, at which point it will then be down to knocking on doors and seeing if people will consider selling their properties, or some of their land.
One of the advantages of taking this approach is that you will probably find way more potential projects than you would if you simply go to the estate agent.
For instance, local estate agents will now sell a derelict property, saying “last one in the area”, or “these are now impossible to find”. In real terms what this means is that this kind of property, once plentyful have become much more of a rarety over time, and now rarely come available for sale. The majority of such properties have already been bought, renovated, and so no longer fit that description.
But this doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. They do. I have found thousands, and the majority of these remain untouched. For whatever reason they never actually find their way onto the open market, and in many cases, never will. This doesn’t mean that an owner wouldn’t sell them however of the right offer was made.
Another surprisingly common theme is where someone has bought a smallholding, House, usually with one or two long barns around a yard. They will spend a small fortune doing up the house for their own comfort, and then completely neglect the other buildings, allowing them to crumble, and in some cases demolish them. You will never get these back. I always see this as an apalling lack of responsibility. For the cost of that new ride on mower, you could put a tin roof on the barn, and save it from deterioration for another fifty years…but people don’t.
You will probably have much more of an ability to decide how much land you want to take with the property. Many small farms will have 70 to 80 acres which will be way more than the average smallholder would want to have, however every farmer probably knows that his neighbour’s would quite happily absorb 10 or 20 acres of the land that is a joining their own which could usually reduce the size of a holding down to something much more manageable.
The only way to do this of course is to be approaching farmers directly. Another advantage of this approach is that the majority of farmers see much more value in the land they own than in the buildings, particularly the old fashioned and traditional properties, Barns houses etc which have often been increasingly neglected over the years.
In the last 30 to 40 years the majority of farmers have expanded their holdings by building modern steel frame buildings around their main farms, usually leaving the traditional Barns and other structures intact, but sometimes in a state of almost complete collapse as they have little value in the modern farming world.
You shouldn’t be deterred by this, what is more important is that the traditional structures are still intact and restorable. Any modern steel frame barn can be easily dismantled and will usually find a ready buyer. I have seen numerous examples where what has been a farm for generations has now become a family home with just the adjacent buildings being renovated and all the modern farm buildings literally being swept away to provide what is in most cases a much nicer environment and setting.
Find a piece of land that is part of a bigger holding and purchase this.
This may not be as unrealistic as it sounds. Over the years I have heard innumerable stories of people who have acquired bits of land as people with larger holdings either liquidate them to raise some cash or simply to reduce the size of their holding. And sometimes, good neighbours just do each other a favour.
Most of these transactions will never be publicly advertised. The majority of land sold has probably been done by making a private arrangement. The downside with this is that as someone looking to buy, you will never even get to hear about it.
The size of small holdings used to be considerably larger, and it was not uncommon to have people with 20-30 Acres attached to their property. Nowadays the majority are probably looking for between 2 to 5 acres and anything more than this would be seen as unmanageable or unnecessary.
The other factor is that the price of land has remained relatively stable, so adding up to 5 acres of land to a house and yard will exponentially increase its value, but adding more than that will only add the added value of the Land itself on a price per Acre basis. If you see small holdings being advertised it is often quite common for them to offer to sell the main holding with a few Acres around it and the other land then becomes negotiable.
I suspect a good reason for this is that many people will get put off by acquiring too much land, not wanting the workload or responsibility, and so more manageable smallholdings will always sell better. This way it becomes a win-win situation. You can have the basic property, or you can essentially add to it pretty much as much as you want. As has already been stated, local farmers will almost always happily swallow up odd pieces of land that become available if it is on a boundary to their existing property.
But what this does also mean is that a few you start looking for for places in the area be interested in that have Large blocks of land with them, you can then approach owners and and see if some of that land can be negotiated for Purchase. as with all these situations you can only ask. and bear in mind people’s circumstances can change quite significantly. somebody liquidating a property in the Southeast and buying a large holding may well feel comfortable for the next 20 years, but the diminishing value of Investments savings etc means that people are often financially much poorer as they get older. This is ironic as they can often be holding land and property that is worth an absolute fortune.
Another option which I have never heard of people doing is to find the rural property of your dreams(without land, or enough land), and then approach whatever landowner owns the land around you, and offer to buy this at the same time. I’ve come across lots of situations where someone bought the property, and then down the line, ended up buying land from a neighbour, but there is no reason why this couldn’t be a clear plan from the outset. When you consider the added value of taking a house, adding a couple of acres, and becoming a smallholding, the added value is way over the value of the land itself. This means you could make an outrageous offer(for the land), and still get the whole at a huge discount.
Another option would be to find out the holdings that are being sold as soon as they come on the market, particularly if they have the option of different amounts of land. What is going to happen to the land they don’t sell with the main property, or alternatively, are they willing to sell off a block of land, knowing that it makes little real difference to the value of the main property.
As you may notice, there are a multitude of ways that you can approach this.
Come to an arrangement with someone who has more land than they need.
Believe it or not if land is owned by somebody who is not a farmer and therefore not actively exploiting any value or potential that it has, they will probably be getting a peppercorn rent from it which has very little relationship to the actual value of the property. The majority will let off their excess land to local farmers for cattle, sheep etc just to ensure that it is being kept clear and maintained because otherwise it then becomes their responsibility to do this.
There must be any number of ways to come to an arrangement with a landowner to either rent, lease or some kind of deferred purchase arrangement. Bear in mind that anybody who has the land in the first place probably paid an awful lot less for it than its current value so their investment in real terms can be quite low. That is not to say that they’re going to be giving it away to anybody who comes and asks but it does mean that somebody agreeing to sell a piece of land to somebody else may well be in a position to effectively finance the purchase of that land given that they already own it. There doesn’t need to be an actual financial transaction, just an agreement in place that is professionally set up. Yet again this is one of those situations where you don’t know if this is a possibility if you never ask the question.
And believe it or not, people who have just invested their time and effort into a piece of land may be quite picky about who they would want to take up the mantle from them.
I came across one situation where a slightly curmudgeonly older man had his smallholding on the market for many years. Lots of people came and looked and even made offers to buy and he simply weighed them up and clearly in most cases turned them down because they weren’t who he wanted to pass his land and property on to.
What then became interesting is that he sold it to a family who seemed to be really nice people and while the deal was going through then made the unusual request to be able to stay on the land and live in a static caravan just outside the yard.
The new owners agreed to this arrangement and he duly moved into his caravan to live there for his remaining later years. They even became his friends, and later on, carers and helped to maintain his independence as he got older.
And the benefits to them of helping somebody who they could have quite easily turned down if they wished to. When he died he then left his assets back to them, so in real terms they were given the property in return for allowing him to have a decent life in his latter years.
I realise that this is an exceptional situation but it also demonstrates the emotional investment that people have in the properties that they own and their desire to ensure that whatever legacy they have created is passed on to someone who will appreciate and maintain it.
And it may be possible to have other ways of creatively financing and purchase of a piece of land.
By its very nature land is a finite resource, therefore any investment in it is always unlikely to diminish in value, and the opposite is almost always the case. Just because banks may not be happy to lend you the money for a purchase doesn’t mean that individuals won’t, or these days even crowdfunding may be an option.
A word of caution here though. When I talk about buying land, I’m referring to buying a block of established agricultural land, something that sits within its own well established boundaries, has proper access, fencing, and in most cases a water supply on site. Be very very cautious about people selling plots of potential building land where they have simply taken a field, divided it into nominal sized chunks, and sell it on to the gullible buying public. These people make their money, and I suspect, lots of it by giving the impression you are buying a solid investment, and will cash out when a planning application goes through. It never will, and you won’t. If you want to see this in action, just look at the major property auction houses. They all get land like this coming up regularly.
We got very excited for 5 minutes when we discovered my ex partner’s father, who had died, had purchased plots of land in Bermuda, with this very grand plan in mind.
He probably spent as much as you could have paid for a house in the late 60’s.
We didn’t even pass the info on to the solicitor dealing with the estate.
I found out within minutes that 40 years on it was still a barren, rocky outcrop with virtually no development on it, and certainly not all the roads, schools, and large comfortable bungalows that people thought they would be living in. Oh, and he was a very proud (and rather boastful) member of MENSA.
Proper agricultural land has consistently risen in value over the last 20-30 years. And as long as it remains in reasonably good condition, it should never lose value in real terms. You will always be making a good investment.
Try asking people you know who are living a similar life to what you aspire to.
Believe it or not, many of the people who dropped out and purchased their smallholdings in the 70s and 80s, having left behind the rat race and families in the South East of England, are now in the process of inheriting properties that are sometimes worth almost obscene amounts of money.
And this is for people who already have their lifestyle set up, their finances established, their world pretty much complete so the addition of even large amounts of extra cash may not make any kind of impact on their overall lifestyle.
However, they may well be amenable to consider supporting other people who want to create a lifestyle similar to the one that they aspired to but don’t have the resources for. And when there are extensive safeguards built in i.e. creating a charge against the property or land being bought, there is probably very little overall risk. Even less if you consider the fact that anybody wishing to purchase land and develop a life around it will inevitably be improving that land if only by their own time and effort.
My parents actually bought land in the area that we moved to in the 70s. Unfortunately they didn’t hang on for very long, I seriously wish they had. What I do know is that they financed the purchase of the land with a private mortgage arranged through one of the local solicitors. Back then it was quite common for solicitors to hold funds on behalf of their clients and invest these directly in mortgages etc.
People still have money. Anybody with money can invest it any which way they choose. The fact that most will take a safe route and just stick it into ISA’s and investment funds doesn’t mean there won’t be a few who may choose to be more creative. Any investment where there is good security is normally a safe bet.
I have a friend who recently inherited the majority of a house in the south east from his sister. It was tiny, in poor condition, and full of fairly worthless stuff. Because of this, he is now around 3-500K better off. He’s a lovely guy, but that money will now sit in a low interest account, doing nothing.
I now know people who have struggled, and been fairly impoverished all their lives, suddenly inheriting a three bedroom semi in Croydon, and not changing a single thing about their lives. And why would they. Many people are not money orientated, and it means little to them. But this same money could transform the lives of others if put to better use.
As with everything, you will never know if you don’t ask.
Adverse possession
What is your intention?
Looking to purchase property??
If you’re just looking for somewhere where there may be the possibility to approach the owner, make an offer and purchase the property, well first you need to find the property.
Just because something hasn’t been listed for sale, doesn’t mean that the owner won’t consider selling if the right amount suddenly appears on the table. There is never any harm in looking for yourself, doing the legwork, making the approach etc.
You could also consider using someone with a skillset like my own to seek out suitable properties, make an initial approach, and see if there is any interest in making a sale, whether now, or in the future.
For instance, the average age of farmers is now into their 70’s, and many are actively getting out of the business due to the increasing constraints and interference from government. This means that there may well be a range of properties coming on the market in the next few decades that haven’t been touched in generations. What an opportunity.
Other ways to get the use of land
Many people are currently looking for land, but a lot of those will not be in a position to make a good financial offer, particularly as the cost of property and land has risen so much over the last few decades. This has effectively locked out thousands of people, many of whom would dream of the better life, but few of whom have the resources available to make a realistic go of things
The sad reality is that the majority of people who are able to take that step into the perfect country life, are likely to be people at the end of their careers, and having capital, property, and pensions to support them in their new life. The down side is these are not energetic young families with dreams, ideas, and probably more importantly, children. And this is creating a very real distortion in rural populations where the age of the average population is now late middle age onwards, and there are fewer and fewer children being brought up. I only have to walk around my local town to see what has now become god’s waiting room over the last 20 years.
However this does have the potential for possibilities. There are lots of examples of where people have bought into the country life, brought energy, money, creativity etc, and set about building the world they want to build. Then time sets in, people get older, health starts to suffer, resources start to diminish, and you can see how a property, which has had a huge amount of effort invested in it, starts to look a little down at heel.
Perhaps the owners may consider some kind of arrangement where they let others use their land in return for work around the property etc. It’s worth considering. It must be quite demoralising to see the results of decades of hard work,slowly being reabsorbed into the background foliage, only to disappear. And believe me this is very real. There are numerous properties where you can see this process taking place.
This is based on years of searching for properties, and the various ways of getting information about them. What you are getting here is a great deal of distilled knowledge and experience, very little of which is easily available in a form like this. I hope you make good use of this information. I am not attempting to monetise this knowledge. I simply want what I consider to be usable land brought back into use, properties abandoned being done up and being of benefit to people. If you are looking for land as part of a dream to live a better life, all the better. I like it when people try to create a better world, whatever form this may take.