Investment Land for Sale
Unlike gold or bonds, investment land for sale in the UK is a finite resource and is becoming ever more so with each passing day.
There has been a lot of coverage in the press recently about John Prescott's house building targets for investment land. Best Plots will look at the trends in the availability of and demand for investment land across the UK. This is important because it will give some idea of where demand for investment land for sale is highest, and also which areas of the UK are under pressure to accomodate homes and which areas will see their land investment rise in value, as they benefit as a result of having high demand areas next to them.
John Prescott has correctly identified that there is a massive housing shortage in the UK - and the South East in particular - that needs to be resolved. His plan to tackle this problem involves both greenfield and brownfield investment land for sale. Although it is of course desirable to build as much of brownfield land for sale, several factors, including the massive migration south of large parts of the UK population and the extreme scarcity of brownfield land for sale, means that a large proportion - the vast majority in fact - will have to be built on greenfield and greenbelt land for sale.
Greenbelt and Greenfield
The green belt was originally created after World War II by the government to protect the countryside and form "belts" of land that would serve to prevent towns from growing too large and merging with each other.
Greenfield sites are not sites within the greenbelt, but simply land that has not been built on before.
Looking closer, there are a number of areas that have been earmarked for this development of investment land. These are areas around Milton Keynes in Bedfordshire, Ashford in Kent, the M11 corridor near Cambridge and the so-called Thames Gateway. Figures bandied around range up to 200,000 homes or more in this areas over the next decade or so. Whatever the actual figures are is largely irrelevant - the demand has been increasing for the last few years, and the fact that the government has now admitted that previous home-building plans on investment land were inadequate, means that there is likely to be an even greater flood of people looking for investment land and getting planning permission for it, in the coming years.
The government is likely to face implementation and other problems that will ensure both that they are unlikely to achieve their targets for building on investment land and that therefore demand for houses will remain higher than supply. Investment land homes in the key development areas mentioned above will also require large-scale transport and infrastructure developments if they are to be truly practical and attractive, who need to travel to work on public transport, drive into London, etc. These improvements will happen, but they will take time to filter through. The new houses will nevertheless remain attractive to their intended targets.
It is also relevant to look at the type of homes that are being planned on investment land and greenfield land. Much has been made of the push for more afforable housing for key workers such as nurses and teachers. This clearly committed government focus ensures that however many homes they succeed in building, a large proportion will be suitable for key workers, and thus increase demand even further, as those who could ill afford to get on the housing ladder in London look to move to the new development areas outside of it.
All these factors combine to ensure that demand will remain strong, and so finding investment land in these key areas, or areas around them, will continue to be a sound investment opportunity. For example, Milton Keynes is one of the areas earmarked for development. Residents and local authorities of this ever-growing town know they are becoming over-populated as they seek to implement government building plans, a fact that leads them to build into the green belt because they have no choice. Thus, the green belt is eroded and the gaps between large towns likes Milton Keynes and smaller towns and villages near by decreases, thus increasing the likelihood of builders moving into the surrounding areas and making investment land owned there much more valuable.
