Covenants against parking motorhome on drives.

[trevskoda]

Best to buy a we farm or land, when you pass on to kids etc there is no capital gains tax.

 

[mariesnowgoose]

Best to buy a we farm or land, when you pass on to kids etc there is no capital gains tax.

I tried to do that about 18 years ago, Trev.

3 and a half acre field near our house.

The guy who won it at the auction paid way over the odds for it. The price it fetched was more than double top farmland value at the time, and this was not top farmland by any means.

Never even got a chance to bid as it went off the scale within seconds, and was sold in seconds! But he was determined no one else was having it. Told me afterwards he would have gone to 100k - and there was no doubt he would have done so, if necessary. Cash buyer.

Put up a metal barn shortly afterwards and still the same use now (horses).

Land values have gone even crazier since.

 

[ricc]

We've done a few please extensions. Mortgage companies won't lend if the lease hasn't got summit like 50 years left so your stuck with cash buyers if you don't extend. Sticking another 99 years on also ends the ground rent. Llast 2 bed flat we did was about 15 k. Reckon it put 30 k on the sale price and massively increased the number of potential buyers.
Lease holder can't refuse the extension if you've been the property owner for over 2years. It is possible for the selling owner to start the process and transfer it to the buyer before it's done so the buyer pays the leaseholder rather than the seller having to find the Dosh upfront.

 

[marchie]

I like stollen. prefer it to English Christmas Cake.

I had a seasonal job in M&S in the run up to retirement, including a spell on the tills. When a colleague put her shopping on the conveyor belt, I enquired, 'Is that Stollen or have you forgotten your Staff Discount Card?'. Added a bit of variety to the tedium of scanning gateaux galore and Xmas puddings by the tonne ...

Steve

 

[GeoffL]

For most housing estate dwellings, 99 year leases were the norm, Trev, and there was no guarantee of lease renewal, much less any certainty of a reasonable Ground Rent. But the iniquity of that system has begun to change, and the law is being changed, but slowly

Steve

Salutary warning: near where I live are a lot of cliffside chalets. Most are holiday homes but some are permanent residences. Around the turn of the Millennium, a lot of those chalets came up for sale at asking prices low enough to set alarm bells ringing. All were leasehold and many of those coming up for sale only had five years or so of the lease remaining. Turns out that the leaseholder had died and the person who inherited the leases chose not to renew them and instead offered the freeholds for sale at ridiculously high prices (more than what the market price should have been for the chalet and land together). Several people who bought got badly burned. Some long-standing owners destroyed their chalets so that the new landlord couldn't benefit ... and then walked away!

Lease holder can't refuse the extension if you've been the property owner for over 2years.

FWIW, I suspect that's either a recent change in the law or doesn't apply to holiday homes (i.e. those where you're not officially allowed to spend the entire year in residence).

 

[mariesnowgoose]

I never liked the idea of leasehold properties, would never have bought one myself, and, for anyone starting out, suggest you avoid them like the plague.

The thieving "land grabs" happened a long time ago and the majority of "acreage" has continued to swap hands amongst the landed gentry or the very wealthy ever since. As a Northern pleb, it's quite satisfying to have acquired a little of it back, no matter how miniscule.

Caution: you might think you own it, but never forget it can always be compulsorily purchased or taken away from you at any point, if the government and their backers want it for something.

Wonder how many people's lives were upended with the unmitigated fiasco that was HS2, for example?

 

[trevskoda]

Above post 100% as you only have the use of it, and anyway you cant take it with you in the end.

 

[Robmac]

I never liked the idea of leasehold properties, would never have bought one myself, and, for anyone starting out, suggest you avoid them like the plague.

The thieving "land grabs" happened a long time ago and the majority of "acreage" has continued to swap hands amongst the landed gentry or the very wealthy ever since. As a Northern pleb, it's quite satisfying to have acquired a little of it back, no matter how miniscule.

Caution: you might think you own it, but never forget it can always be compulsorily purchased or taken away from you at any point, if the government and their backers want it for something.

Wonder how many people's lives were upended with the unmitigated fiasco that was HS2, for example?

They compulsory purchase a few houses in our village Marie to make way for a new road to the infamous Black Cat roundabout on the A1. This means that the end of our lane which has a slip road to the A1 will be closed permanently which forces us to queue at the roundabout every morning to get into the local town of St Neots. Of course we won't, the back lanes into the town will/have now become a rat run and these lanes are falling to bits already. Thousands of houses are being planned (yes on farm land/flood plains) and they have been warned that there is not the infrastructure for them but they carry on regardless, loads of brown envelopes there I reckon!

Two of the properties compulsory purchased were listed thatched cottages and they said that they would be taken apart and rebuilt somewhere else. They have now back tracked on this and said it wasn't viable so they have removed a couple of fireplaces, bread ovens Etc. and donated them to a museum and bulldozed the properties. An old man had lived in one of them for 60 years and his son posted on facebook that he was forced out leaving his belongings behind apart from a few clothes, the rest were bulldozed with the cottage.

 

[mariesnowgoose]

Above post 100% as you only have the use of it, and anyway you cant take it with you in the end.

Exactly!

 

[Robmac]

Exactly!

Never councillors houses that get compulsory purchased though?

 

[mariesnowgoose]

Never councillors houses that get compulsory purchased though?

Nah, probably too many brown envelopes to clear out the way first, Rob...

 

[Robmac]

Nah, probably too many brown envelopes to clear out the way first, Rob...

I can't say too much about the councillors who live in and around our village Marie and what they've got away with. I'd probably end up in court!

 

[maingate]

Another potential scam for buyers to be aware of on new build estates has affected my Grandson. Gateshead Council sold off some prime building land (former school with playing fields) to a developer and they built a private estate of around 80 or more houses. Included in the purchase was a small monthly payment to a landscaping company who would keep the estate tidy. My Grandson has to pay £7 per month to a company that has never set foot on the land. He has cancelled the direct debit to this company when they said that not enough people had paid the fee to justify doing any work there. However, it turns out nearly everyone on the estate IS paying the fee.