The cost of land in East Dulwich?

[char1ie]

If I were to look at my back garden and think about building a workshop at the back of it, how could I value the land that it will be built on? By the square foot, obviously, but what can I compare it to? Does any bright spark have any input as to the cost of land in East Dulwich for building a garage or workshop. Not residential. Freehold cost.

Your thoughts welcome.

Charlie

[DaveR]

Your best bet if you want a true value would be to look for an existing garage currently availalbe (i) either to buy freehold or (ii) to rent. For (i) make a deduction for the cost of building a garage or for (ii) apply a multiplier to the rent to give a reasonable yield. At least then you are looking at land which is permitted to be used for that purpose, and has the requisite access (which may not apply to your back garden)

[char1ie]

Not a bad suggestion, so say a garage is ?100 a month and cost ?10k to build and is built on 100sqft of land. Multiplier = ?100 a month for every ?20,000 of sale. ?20,000 for a garage - ?10,000 to build = ?10,000 = ?100 per sqft.

Hmmm, too much.

I have done a scan of some land for sale on Rightmove in various parts of east and south east London and for residential land it seems to come out between ?15 and ?50 per sqft depending on if it has planning permission on it or not.

Charlie

[AcedOut]

The price the land is worth depends on what has been approved (if anything) to be built on it. And the price psm is not going to be linearly scalable.

[char1ie]

Any suggested benchmark?

[red devil]

The freeholder of a flat I used to own on Barry Road tried to sell a small plot of land with a garage at the bottom of the garden, I think he used it as a getaway from her indoors! It had separate access from Tyrell Road. I know he tried to get planning permission for a 2 bed house and was unsurprisingly turned down. Burnett Ware Graves had it on the market for around ?40k (I reckon prices are back at that level - summer '06), might be worth checking with them to find out if he managed to sell it.

[EDOldie]

In my experience garages sell for around ?30-?40K in and around Dulwich, Herne Hill, etc etc. Usually at the higher end of the scale to a neighbour and the lower to someone who just wants a garage.

Valuing landlocked, rear parts of gardens, is much more difficult and usually depends on the value it will add to the recipient property and the value detracted from the sellers property. But it's usually rarely less than ?5K and rarely more than ?10K unless there is a significant improvement in value to the purchasing property.

[alice]

Hi red devil - yeah i remember that. went to see it - had some potential if kept as a single storey live /work sort of a thing but as it had some rights of way through the back from a barry road flat [ maybe yours] didnt end up making an offer. but it was big maybe 3 times the size of a garage - had a washroom etc

and char1ie - if its your garden why do you need to know the value of the land? For what its worth i'd say a garage with access from the road would be worth 30000+ But if a workshop at the end of a garden [without access] reduces the garden to less than say 30' that'd have an adverse effect on the value of the house.

[red devil]

Hi Alice, it was actually a fire escape for the top floor flat, the garage went across the full width of the garden so anyone fleeing a fire had to go through a gate in the fence and through next door's garden!

[theboycj]

Hi I'm just reviving this thread as interested in building a man cave at the back of garden...the neighbour owns the land but through the years they have not enforced ownership... we know that legally that they could fence and take the land back and that anything on this land is legally classed as theirs. Does anyone have any advise as to how we would go about this? The land is substantial and makes up a big part of our garden - I would say its at least 130 square meters and makes up between 30-40% of our current garden....

Any tips would be useful.. thinking of offering c?20k for this land given the size and the ability to build man cave!

[pr5ined]

If this land is not legally yours then you are trespassing and illegally on the land. You can be subject to legal action and prosecution so it would be in your best interests to get this resolved either way.

I would suggest either rent the land or buy it...before the current owner catches on.

Maybe look at renting the land but also think about how much additional value that 30/40% of the garden will add to your property. With the way that ED property is I would suggest that it would add more than ?20k if it makes up so much of 'your' current garden so you might have priced that optimistically.

[theboycj]

Hmmm slightly worried now....Will try and resolve with the owner of the land asap.

Does anyone know if we will be liable for prosecution or historic payment for using the land in the past???

[rendelharris]

If your neighbour hasn't complained about you using their land in the past then they have given you "implied licence" so no, you shouldn't be liable to any legal penalties - similarly if they haven't tried to get rent from you. If you build on it without buying though that would certainly constitute "direct and unjustifiable interference with another's land" which is the defintion of trespass so they could certainly stop you.

Cheers,

Rendel

[DaveR]

Legally it's quite complicated (and I'm definitely not an expert). Firstly, and to reassure you, you can't be prosecuted for trespass. Prosecution = criminal courts, trespass = civil matter. Secondly, it is possible to acquire rights over land that belongs to someone else over time, including the right to effectively take the land as your own, but whether you have actually acquired any rights (for example what is described above as an implied licence) depends on what exactly has happened in relation to the land, and for how long. This is an area that, if you want to pursue it, really needs specialist advice from a lawyer with plenty of experience of these sorts of cases, so will take some time and quite a lot of money.

If you just want to buy the land you can approach the owner and make them an offer, but it would be worth getting a valuation from a local surveyor so you have an idea what a reasonable offer might be.

As regards any historic liability for damages for trespass, this is also unfortunately pretty complicated, so if it actually comes up I'd recommend taking some advice - if you have been occupying the land for years, you can't change that now, so what you need to know is whether you may have a defence and/or what the measure of damages might be. These are also dependent on the particular facts, so there's no point in trying to give any general advice.

[char1i3]

pr5ined Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> If this land is not legally yours then you are

> trespassing and illegally on the land. You can be

> subject to legal action and prosecution so it

> would be in your best interests to get this

> resolved either way.

This is just plain wrong. Trespass is a claim for damage. It does not prevent people accessing land.

Charlie