Site price 195k, offer 140k?

Hi

I have only just registered with the site after months of browsing the forums & gaining loads of information from it. I just need your help with something now.

A site has come up for sale in our area (Limerick) - half an acre for 195k.

My question is, are the market prices for sites following the same trends as houses i.e. would an offer of 140k be seen as being a joke of an offer and not taken seriously?. I am just not sure what the trend is for sites. I know they are getting increasingly harder to come by so maybe there is no negotiations to be done.

The area we wish to buy is in a 'pressure area' so the vendor is restricted in who he can sell the site to i.e. you have to be from the area to get planning.

What would the general consensus be on this? We are planning to offer 140k and see what happens but at the same time want to be taken seriously. Realistically we cannot afford much more than 160k especially with the higher rate of stamp duty on sites in excess of 150k.

Thanks in advance for your advice
Redwifey

go for it, a no doesnt hurt! and seeing as it in one of these strange protected areas vendor has a limited market

( by strange I dont mean limerick I mean local councils coming up with policies that discriminate ?

i would agree, a friend of mine saw a site for sale for €120,000, eventually got it for €60,000, granted it was a different area.

in the area i am presently looking, we offered well below the asking and were told that the vendor expects to sell for €15000 MORE by the end of the year. land is as they say "land is the only thing their not making more of" so its not quite the same as houses.

however, i would definitely offer below, and don't move up too quickly if you get knocked back, you'll look like your a chancer, although to be fair, its a reverse of fortunes, so who cares!!

Hi,

You could try but the land owner might not be in a hurry to sell. When you are trying to sell your house - you have somewhere to move to or want to move on - with a site if the land owner is not in a hurry he can sit it out.

Thanks very much for your replies.
My husband has been onto the auctioneer and has offered the 140k so we will just have to wait and see.

We put across as strong a case as we could, i.e. vendor is restricted in who he can sell to, that we are ready to move on the application straight away. Also, there is a second site for sale adjacent to the one we are looking at for the same money so we also said to the auctioneer that the vendor would find this easier to sell if we got planning on ours. To be honest I don't expect that we will get it at this price but you never know. As another poster said the vendor may not be in that much of a hurry but then again we have no problem in sitting tight to get a site for the right money.

Sites within reasonable commuting distance of Dublin are asking 200k for half an acre so the asking seems very high to me.

Yeah it is a ridculous amount of money but sites around our area are going for between 150k - 200k unfortunately. By going a bit further out you might get a site for about 100k but we do not want to move out much further.

Well the vendor refused 140k almost immediately and we went back with a final offer of 150k yesterday afternoon so we are still waiting to hear back - hopefully it shows that he is at least considering the offer anyway.

Fair enough, the demand must be stronger in the S.W. to build your own gaff. (assuming they are actually going for this money, not just asking it).

Hi

I'm in southeast and sites in rural location are asking anything from E100,000 to E130,000 per acre.

Yes they are actually making this sort of money alright. Having spoken to a few auctioneers, they are saying that there has been an increasing demand for sites in the last few years.
I would imagine that demand would increase too over the next while given that trades people are more readily available now.

sites have long been in demand and there are less on the market at the moment so its a reverse of the house buying scenario right now. Expect sites to be €150k and up depending on area in and around Limerick. Pressure areas have limited potential buyers but there is also limited land. I You might still get it for less than the €160k, depending on the area your buying in.

Thanks Mr Man...

Hopefully we will come in around that price. We have actually just heard of another site of 2acres about 3 miles futher over the road - the farmer wants to sell it as 1 lot (so as to not encourage too many houses being built there) for 180k. He already has an offer on the table for 125k for 1acre but we will see if we can negotiate to get the 2 acres for good money. At least that way we would have more options.
The auctioneer said that the farmer really doesn't want to split the land so he has not accepted the offer on the 1 acre.

Edited because I was not finished!

Just an update to the above...

Well the EA came back to say that the vendor would not take anything less than 180k for the site so we declined it.

In the meantime, we went ahead and bought the 2 acre site for 180k. We put our deposit on it yesterday and are meeting the architect tomorrow to see what the story will be with planning.

We are only going to apply for planning on 1 acre and then keep the other acre separate for now. We may try and sell the other acre down the line and knock a lump sum off our mortgage (minus CGT) or else hold onto the site - either way it will add to the value of our house for now.

Is there any way we could avoid paying CGT on this acre in the future or has anyone any other practical suggestions of how we could maximise the value of this land?

It may be worth your while to investagate two linked issues.

Firstly, the planning authority may "sterilsie" some/all of your land other than the bit you are looking for planning permission on. Basically this means that you (or anyone else) will not be allowed to get planning on any other land you currently own if you attempt to do so in the future.

Secondly - if this sterilisation is a possibility you may be better off to apply for outline planning or planning for 2 houses on the 2 acres (if the planning authority is open to that).... Then you could sell on the 2nd site with planning.

Your idea is very good, but just look into one or two angles first - just in case the planning authority might throw a spanner or two in the works...

MrMan said:

sites have long been in demand and there are less on the market at the moment so its a reverse of the house buying scenario right now. Expect sites to be €150k and up depending on area in and around Limerick. Pressure areas have limited potential buyers but there is also limited land. I You might still get it for less than the €160k, depending on the area your buying in.

Click to expand...

Oh. Do you mean less in this context?

Hi delboy
Thanks a mill for your advice. We are going to our engineer/architect tonight and as far as I know he is fairly involved in the Limerick planning scene so I will ask him on that.

Camry, I am not sure what you meant.