On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 23:41:32 +0100, Stewart Robert Hinsley wrote:

3.85 acres. The developers should be able to squeeze 50
townhouses on
to that.
snip
I notice that the "guide price" is $75000 ...

or £50,000/hectare. Trying to decide if that is expensive, ie the
land already has outline planning permission of some sort.

The price for a house plot with planning permission is about £50,000..

I wasn't sure what proportion of a 150 to 200k house would be down to
the land it is built on.

The guide price is pricing the land as an allotment site, not a
potential residential development.

This is true the entry in the brochure for the Allotments doesn't
mention anything about planning permissions outline or otherwise. If
such any permission existed then I doubt the estate agent would have
left it out, as it adds so much to the value of the land... The
allotments lot is a tiddly part of an estate valued at 10 million.

Reading between the lines of the description I get the "don't even
think about buying this to build on, unless you want a fight with the
council and allotment holders" impression.

There are 31 allotments on the site, if everyone put in £2,500 that
would be £77,500. A buyer of Lot 1 (a whole farm) could well be
willing to sell the alloments to an alloment group just to make it
SEP (Someone Elses Problem). No demands for a water supply, ungraded
security fencing, maintenance of paths and access or WHY...

I should imagine that the council would support the formation of an
"Allotment Trustees" group, there are other sources of money, some
have already been mentioned. There are national organisation(s) for
Allotments, get in touch with them, they should know about other
sources and should be able to support the formation of a group.
Warning it will be hard work and it almost certainly end up with just
a few determined individuals doing most of the whilst the other
holders sit on their deck chairs by their sheds.

All is not lost!

--
Cheers
Dave.