Hacker News Reader

Comment by leashless | Hacker News Reader

Do you have any idea how much land costs in the UK?

Like… any idea?

You can’t buy a parking space in this country for £7000.

this is an international website, there's lots of people on this website from all over the world... I am from the UK. I am writing this comment from the UK. I have extensive knowledge of land and property prices in the UK, but that's not particularly important, because anybody can operate Google from anywhere in the world.

For example, a quick Google search will show that you can buy coastal land with houses on it for less than £1.7m so £1.7m for land that you cannot develop is an absurd suggestion. You can buy a 4 bedroom apartment moments from your piece of land... for £650k: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/127693028

You're being intentionally evasive, given you've been shown both land registry records (which, fyi, if are wrong, then the seller has avoided hundreds of thousands of pounds in stamp duty and HMRC will not look kindly on that when they receive my email) and an auction website where the land was sold (for the same price listed with the land registry).

I will literally buy that piece of land from you, right now, for the list price, if you can show any evidence it is worth that amount. You can buy parking spaces all over the UK for £7k, you can even buy houses in the north of England for ~£7k! The idea that a small piece of beach the size of my house that cannot be built on is worth more a parking space in London is ridiculous -- let alone worth more than a mansion down the road from the beach. You could buy 1.72 acres in London for less than £1.7m.

If you are a really serious about this, I don’t see why the sellers of the land would not be happy to take you up on the offer.

As noted in the other comment, we do have an independent valuation on file.

The deal is legitimate. If you feel like following through, do feel free to drop me an email.

I do have a general idea of how much land costs in the UK, and also, I've been to Milford On Sea several times, and I've walked and run across the land in question. It's not on the nice area of the beach: that's a few hundred metres further down the coast, and that's where there are things like beach huts. It's a good piece of land for dog walkers, though - and there's a footpath running through it. I don't think you could realistically build anything there, hence the low price.

If you are visiting it, I can highly recommend Verveine, a really good fish restaurant about half a mile away, on the High Street. A great tasting menu - 8 courses with matched wines, for £130 - much cheaper than London, just like the land prices. Excellent desserts.

The neighbor comment to you shows the actual plot of land, using publicly available government records, and it's a tiny sliver of a cliff that has pre-existing right of way claims and basically impossible to develop on. Indeed, it WAS purchased for 7000 pounds, so you should probably stop lying.

As noted, the 7000 was a transaction fee on the land transfer.

We have an independent valuation on file at >1M.

Please show some common sense here. You can’t just purchase chunks of English coastline for 7000. If you could, half of the middle class people in London would own their own stretch of beach!

I’m shocked at how badly people want to twist the facts to suit their own prejudices.

Stop mucking around.

The reason you cannot "just" purchase "chunks" of the English coastline is because most of our coastline belongs to either local authorities or the crown estate. There is no sane business case for owning an acre of beach because a local authority will never grant planning permission to build anything worthwhile on it, so you would "own" a chunk of beach for no reason other than to inherit the burden of managing a piece of land (and who knows what that entails when councils often have very expensive shoreline protection projects to fund!). There is no financial sense in local authorities carving up beaches into chunks and selling them to Londoners for a few grand, it's a patently absurd suggestion. The reason this is a rare opportunity is the same reason it sold for so little: it's pointless, for both buyer and seller. It's not much different from owning a piece of the moon, or a square of land in Scotland so you can pretend to be a "Lord".

> You can’t just purchase chunks of English coastline for 7000 pounds

Land that you can’t build on or realize economic value from rents isn’t worth much, in the UK or anywhere else for that matter, even if it’s oceanfront land.

But can I camp on it and make bonfires and light fireworks and sleep in a temporary yurt while blasting music with friends?

If this is how you're going to respond to very specific questions that provide evidence, you can't complain if nobody believes you.

See neighbouring comments. Docs are on file, deal is solid.

Have you shifted from claiming the land sold for over a million to claiming that it's worth that much, despite having undeniably last sold for 7k?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com