Member Article

Trebling Teesside land value through smarter use

When considering the value of your land assets, the opportunity to triple it could sound a little too good to be true; However, by carefully considering your future developments use this could be a reality…thanks to the benefits associated with ‘change of use’.

Consider an agricultural land holding, around 65 acres, with the opportunity to sell around 5 acres of your land at no significant loss to your annual agricultural turnover. Depending upon location and current values you would expect around £7,000-£15,000 per acre.

In this scenario, it would be possible to sell 5 acres for approximately £75,000. It could, however, be put to a more coherent use and, for around a £15,000 investment, gain a 350% return, by considering alternative uses.
Commercial use, housing, or holiday lets are all possible options, following a consultation with an expert landscape architect to advise you on how best to maximise the value of your land.

As previously mentioned the key element at play here is ‘change of use’. A good landscape architect can advise you on changing the permitted use of your land from agricultural to housing. In our experience, the average housing developer would want to fit 9 homes per acre onto a site to ensure a good return.

A professional landscape developer can also guide you through the process of obtaining ‘Outline planning permission’.

Outline planning isn’t the full permission that would be required to be able to start building on site immediately; instead it means that the developer who is buying the land knows that development will be permitted, and that if they stick closely to the plans you have drawn up, it will be time efficient and cost effective to convert the outline planning to full planning.

To get outline planning there are some basic costs involved:

Firstly, you will need some initial professional support such as an architect, a landscape architect, and possibly a planning consultant. You don’t need specialist surveys such as: topographical, ecological, tree, geotechnical, archaeological and noise/traffic flooding. You also don’t need to produce any of the technical specifications, as these will be paid for by the developer you sell to.

Following this you will need to pay the planning application fee which is calculated based on the size of the site and the number of houses you are proposing to build on it. For example, for a 5-acre site, with plans for 45 houses, you could expect to pay in the region of £7,700 in planning fees to get outline planning consent. The rest of the planning fees to convert to full planning consent are again paid for by the developer after you have sold.

Once you have outline planning consent and secured the change of use, the value of your land increases to somewhere in the region of £56,000 per acre. So, instead of selling your 5 acres for £75,000, you could be selling it for £280,000. Money that can then be used in future endeavours.

If this sounds of interest the next stage would be to contact a specialist landscape architect to develop an action plan tailored to your specific site…and imagine the possibilities!

Tamsin Harrison is the Managing Director of Heartland Design, A Darlington-based landscape design and urban regeneration company.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Heart Land Group Ltd .