Residential Land

Residential land is not, as often thought, land with planning permission to build a dwelling. Residential land is land that is within a designated residential area, or within an urban boundary.

Residential land for sale will not necessarily be granted planning permission but a site on residential land is definitely more likely to. A brownfield site could also potentially be residential land, if it lies within the urban boundary.

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In recent years, small quantities of residential land have been released through infilling in existing development and building a house, or two, on the garden of another has been given high priorities within many councils. Of course, with the high value of residential land, many house owners have happily sold chunks of their garden and then with their profits, moved on. This has become so popular, or rife, in certain areas that fewer houses remain with this potential. Some councils are even now allowing additional houses to be built on a site which previously was occupied by a garage.

The driving factors are, of course, demand/supply and price. Demand for residential land for sale is incredibly, particularly in the southeast. This has been heightened with the ever-swelling ranks of the self builders who see the option of building their own home as a cheaper one.

Firstly, they have to acquire the land. A survey by the Halifax last year showed what the cost could be. It concluded that over the past 20 years, residential land prices in England and Wales had risen eight-fold. In the corresponding time span, house prices had only increased three-fold.

London understandably was ranked as the most expensive, with a hectare of land costing nearly £5.5m Yorkshire and Humberside is the cheapest place to go to buy residential land, a hectare there will only put you back £870,000. Wales witnessed the greatest increase in residential land price, albeit from a low base. In 1983, a hectare of residential land cost £85,000 (versus £759,000 in London), twenty years later it cost £980,000 - an increase of over 1000%.

The price of residential land sales is unlikely ever to go down that much, unless the Government takes drastic action to increase the supply. This could only be achieved by turning greenfield into residential land - something no Government would ever be willing to do!

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