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Q.
What sized plot do I need and how much will it cost
A.
While there is a minimum size that any house design will sit on, it is possible to select the design to fit the shape of the land, so for example there are a lot of designs of houses for plots that go back a way but have narrow frontages.
In addition to having the house on the plot you will usually want a garage or space for one, room to park a car, where access is onto a main road, room to turn the car, and and some external space. The amount of outside space, will vary from one person to another, while someone who has lived in a town and never had any space may be delighted with a tiny garden, a country person who wants to keep some animals may want a far larger area.
Often permitted development rights allow you later to add other structures in your garden ranging from conservatories and garages to pool houses. As it is often based upon a percentage of the plot size, you need to consider what later additions you are likely to want to make, or you will find you can outgrow your home.
Many vendors will be led to try to divide land into as many plots as they can, so as to maximize the number of houses that can be squeezed in and therefore the amount they can get overall. This practice can results in very small plots, with insufficient room to live now, let alone allowing any scope for the future. In some cases we find that a redefinition of the plots is necessary, resulting in a smaller number of plots but then each may be more expensive, but often vendors are aware where plot sizes are very small and will not be getting any quality offers on them, so the redefinition to salable plots may not result in a large increase in cost. Generally the larger the plot, the more expensive it is, however this is not always the case, for a number of reasons including sometimes planning has only been given for a set number of houses or set total number of rooms, and in other cases the land has been neatly divided into small plots leaving some over or the shape of the land and access limits the arrangement of the plots.
Members produce with our help a personal definition as to their requirements, and in this all the requirements that they have are identified. Armed with this and other information its not too difficult to see which plots are large enough for them, and also for us to look for plots or reintegrating plot divisions that meet these needs.
There is no standard formula for pricing plots and not enough being sold in most areas to set the price based on average prices.
The cost of a plot is sometimes based upon a percentage of the value of the house that can be built upon it. But this percentage will change from area to area, depending on just how much demand there is and how attractive the site. When comparing prices we need to compare like with like, so a plot on a serviced estate, with roads and services onto the plot, would be more valuable than a share of a piece of land where between you, you had to add the road and services.
The percentage used for coming up with a start point for discussions would be based on a typical developer home on the site, not the house you will build, which could be well worth considerably more. As a rough guide a sensible start point is to look for a plot directly off an existing road being worth around 45% of the value of the finished developer home that could be built there. When deciding what could be built there, it is necessary to consider not only the plot size but what else is in the area and how desirable the area is to the types of owners that would buy each property type and size. The location may also have a large effect on the price, so a pleasant place with a nice view will be more than a piece of unused waste ground on the edge of a council estate.
There are many other ways to value a plot, and perhaps a better way although requiring more knowledge is to look at the value of the completed home and deduct from this the cost of ground work, foundations, access, roads, services and other work, the cost of constructing the home, any other costs and a margin for profit, or saving that you want, As long as you fully understand all the cost involved this is far better and will give you a far better idea as to which plots are economic to you and also can be used to show sellers where their plots are over priced. The risk involved in this is in getting accurate enough estimates at an early stage of value and costs and making sure that you have not overlooked something and of course variations from one area to another in prices of labor, which rules out most formula based approaches. This is the route our consultants usually take working with you to help you to decide the economics of any chosen site and in pricing negotiations with owners.
There can be other factors that effect the price, including how fast we can complete once a decision is made, always a good bargaining edge and problems that a developer would have to overcome, even if we can work around them. In some cases where a plot is very near the vendor, as in the case of splitting out a piece of their garden, they may have a particular ideal neighbor in mind, and may be prepared to discount the price where this is met. The club may also be able to get the plots at a lower cost by taking the risk and paying the costs of planning approval applications and other development costs, so that the owner has no costs, risks or aggravation to cope with.
None of this is absolute, things are worth only what people are prepared to pay for them and raise the money to do so. You can find building plots for under £10,000 and plots costing millions, and in some cases the cheaper ones are in far more pleasant places and larger.
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