Investment Plots
The UK Land Agents Directory has now been split it into the following sections:
Please advise me if you know of any Land Agents that I have omitted.
The continued growth of Investment Land Agents amazes me. I have over 70 investment web sites saved in my 'favourites' folder on my computer. Admittedly though, most of these web sites are trying to sell plots of a rural field in the middle of the countryside and use corny statements like "Buy land they don't make it any more" [Mark Twain] on their literature.
As such I thought I should write a brief history of this market to enlighten the 'novices' out there.
Five years ago when I started this web site there were only two Land Investment companies.
In those days it was far easier for the Councils and Government to claim that there would be no need for the building of houses on Greenbelt land. Now that John Prescott has given his backing to build 3,600 homes on greenbelt land in Stevenage (BBC News 23 Oct 2005)) and house builders are openly targeting "scruffy" greenbelt (Barrett chief targets "scruffy" Green Belt - this is money.co.uk 29 Nov 2005) this claim is harder to justify.
Even now, in 2006, the extent of the building on greenbelt land is well hidden by the authorities and the information only tends to see the light of day when it is forced out of the Government - as in the recent case below:
An average of 2,400 acres of undeveloped green belt is being built on each year, the Government has admitted in a parliamentary written answer.
This is a total of more than 15 sq miles - bigger than the city of Lincoln - between 1997 and 2001 alone.
Five major green belts are currently being reviewed to accommodate more housing, answers to parliamentary questions have disclosed.
Green belts, which are intended to restrain towns from sprawling outwards, are under review between Nottingham and Derby, around London, Bristol and Bath, in south-east Dorset, around Poole and around Cheltenham and Gloucester.
Boundaries have already been moved by the Government to accommodate more housing in Tyne and Wear, Greater Manchester and Merseyside, around London and Cambridge.
Figures show that 162 planning applications in green belts went unchallenged by the Government between 1997 and last year and that four per cent of all house building between 2000 and 2002 was in the green belt.
Charles Clover, Environment Editor, The Telegraph. 11/06/2005
