Buying Land, a suggestions

[wolfsong]

Hey Guys, have been inactive for a while due to intense boozing... I mean studying at uni in Canterbury.

Well heres the idea: a friend is having problems finding a house, and has come up with a long term idea.
University accommodation is round about £4000 a year, or £3000 if you're in a rented house (which I'm not), with this budget, he figured, would it not be easier to buy a small plot of land and then fit out a cargo container to live in. We are architecture students, so it's kind of a fetish (my sketching hand twitches every time I think of design my own living space!)
I bought into the idea straight away, as this is exactly the sort of thing I've wanted to do for a while now.

The only problem is finding a suitable plot of land: It would be nice to find land for around for up to £10,000 (preferably a lot less!) within cycling/motorbike distance to Canterbury. Does anyone have any advice about finding said plot? Websites, estate agents, organisations....?

Cheers guys!

[jampot]

try the website www.woodlands.co.uk lists loads of land and woods for sale around the country good site to start at anyways GOOD LUCK ( id so love to do the same, uni halls suck big ones)

[Thomzo]

Welcome to the world of the property developer. Sadly, it's a lovely idea but is really not feasible. You still need planning permission to live in a container, and you will need to kit it out to building regulations. It is possible (there is a whole block of apartments in London made from shipping containers). The fact is that even tiny blocks of land with planning permission will cost over £100,000 anywhere near a major city. Buy it without planning permission and you are taking a huge risk that you'll not get it. Which is a pretty costly mistake. Even land without planning permission, but that's likely to get it, will be snapped up by developers for around the £100k mark.

You might have better luck finding a small terraced house that needs a bit of doing up. Share it with two or three friends and get your parents to guarantee the mortgage. If you buy now you have a fair chance of making some money on it when you finish uni, or you can keep it and rent it out to the next generation of students.

Good luck
Zoe

[grahamhobbs]

You might find a garage for that money, but you would have to secretly camp in it.

Sorry but as others have said that's the system we live in. That's why everyone became travellers until they outlawed that as well. Well not completely....so there's a chink.......

[Green Aura]

I don't know about in England, but I've looked at cheap plots of woodland up here and they all, without exception, have said that no habitation allowed on site - not even a shed in some instances.

Zoe's suggestion of a fixer upper seems like a good option - I'm guessing you'll not get much land for growing anything though.

[TheGoodEarth]

Unfortunately you have a snowflakes chance in hell of buying a plot for that price and getting planning permission.

What I did when I was at college 20 odd years ago was rent a big static caravan on a campsite near college. It was just like a small flat, 2 bedrooms, bathroom etc. As I was renting it off peak e.g. Oct – May it only cost £25 per week plus calor gas. It will obviously cost you more these days but worth looking in to.

Or to satisfy your creative urges you could buy an old wreck for under £1000 (look in self build magazines) and redesign the inside whilst you live there. After fees for siting it you could be well under £3k. Also if it is done up to a decent standard you can flog it for more when you finish studying.

[boboff]

Good Advice Good Earth.

The only way you could do this is to do it illegally, but think, you would need to put in Drains, Electricity, Internet, Water etc, and as soon as you got it going you would have people complain to the council and there would quite literally be "Hell Up."

It's a lovely idea, but I would look at Caravan, Mobile home, Barns, Farms, etc for a chance of living the life.

Best of luck.

[wolfsong]

thanks all for the suggestions, have had a look at the woodlands website, which has some nice stuff on it. Thinking about legislation, the containers would be temporary structures, but it was just an idea... Doing up another property doesn't have the same sort of appeal.

Back to research i think!

[Millymollymandy]

I think a container would be very cold in winter too. How many houses have metal walls?

Good luck with whatever you do though wolfsong.

[TheGoodEarth]

For further reading, there has been some discussion on these over on the GBF.

http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/for ... =1#Item_11

[snapdragon]

I guess your main 'want' is to build, but for living in the static/mobilehome idea could be a good money saver - my son bought one in a not perfect state when he first moved away from home - he did it up made a proper pitched roof, kitchen etc and made 300% profit on it (still waiting for my share ) I just wish I could have bought it from him - superb hillside location, quiet, large garden <sigh>