“Buying your woodland” video

This is the second of a series of videos for people wanting to own a woodland. It’s aimed at prospective buyers but some of the material will be relevant for existing owners too. In the first video I talked about how to find a woodland you might want to buy, what to look for when you read the description of the woodland and visit it in person, and then make an offer to buy it. Now we come to the legal process of paying the money and getting ownership, and trying to avoid nasty surprises along the way.

Text of the video

This is the second of a series of videos for people wanting to own a woodland. It’s aimed at prospective buyers but some of the material will be relevant for existing owners too. 

In the first video I talked about how to find a woodland you might want to buy, what to look for when you read the description of the woodland and visit it in person, and then make an offer to buy it. Now we come to the legal process of paying the money and getting ownership, and trying to avoid nasty surprises along the way.

There are significant differences in the law of property between Scotland versus England and Wales. However in both cases you will make an offer which is accepted and then follow a process which is very similar to the process for buying a house in whichever of the two jurisdictions you are. Both systems have a point after which it is expensive not to pay the money. This point is called concluding missives in Scotland and exchange of contracts in England and Wales. It is essential that any checks about the property are done before this point of no return. For house buying, the missives in Scotland are usually concluded much earlier in the process than the binding exchange of contracts in England and Wales, but the process is more flexible when buying woodlands, since there aren’t chains and removal vans and all the rest of moving house to worry about.

You will generally need to engage a solicitor or conveyancer to undertake the legalities for you, and some sellers will insist on you doing this. Some buyers do successfully avoid the cost of a solicitor by paying the money directly and informing the Land Registry (England and Wales) or Land Register (Scotland) that the ownership has changed. However, there are many risks with this and in my view it is only an option if you are transferring ownership within a family that trust each other, and are prepared to transfer any unknown risks or liabilities within the family along with the property.

Legal searches

As well as correctly drawing up the contracts, handling the money safely, and acting as a point of contact, your solicitor should also carry out legal searches to look for problems not disclosed or not known to the seller. This starts from whatever title deeds or land registry entries are available, to look for liabilities to others and problems such as a lack of guaranteed access across someone else’s land. The search should broaden to include asking the local authority about relevant issues, such as planned developments, tree preservation areas, and Article 4 directives limiting permitted development rights. The local planning authority’s register of granted planning permission and permitted development prior notifications for roadways and buildings should also be checked, but without alerting the planning authority to the presence of roads and buildings built without permission. After 10 years in England and Wales and 4 years in Scotland, construction work becomes immune to enforcement action, and if no one else was bothered enough to report work to the council, this sleeping dog should be left alone. The solicitor should also check for national nature designations such as nearby Sites of Special Scientific Interest. 

For these reasons, it is important to use a solicitor who has some familiarity with rural properties and ideally woodland properties. For instance, most solicitors helping people buy and sell houses in towns and cities don’t have to worry about private rights of way across fields.

Do your own research

It does also have to be said that a solicitor is never going to be as motivated as you to make sure there are no surprises in all this. So in addition to what your solicitor does, I recommend doing as much checking as you can yourself. I’ll put links to all the sources I mention in the description of this video.

You can get the title document and the plan showing boundaries online for three pounds directly from the government Land Registry or Land Register websites. If the property is not adjacent to a public road, it should include a private right of way for your vehicles across other private land to get to a public road. Are there restrictions imposed on the owner of the woodland by covenants? A covenant places an obligation on the owner of one piece of land which benefits the owner of another piece of land. It might prevent you from racing motorbikes in the woodland for instance, due to the noise. Are there any covenants which would prevent you from doing things you intend? Are there obligations to help maintain shared access tracks, or boundary walls and fences?

Given the amount of money you will be spending on the land, get the titles and plans for the neighbouring properties too. This will give you a picture of what you’re buying in to. Then use Google Maps and Ordnance Survey (OS) to see the wider area today, and look at historical Ordnance Survey maps online to see how it has been changing over the last century. (The NLS has an excellent free archive of OS maps for Scotland, England and Wales.)

Next find what the local council or councils are. What is the local planning authority? Is it the council? If it’s in a National Park then the local planning authority will be the park authority. The planning authority should give access to a register of recent planning applications for neighbouring properties too. Perhaps going back decades even. What is going on in the area? Are people just adding new windows to farmhouses or are new houses popping up everywhere? If there are buildings in the woodland itself, do they have planning permission or a forestry permitted development application on file?

Find out local place names for the area and nearby villages and towns. Then use Google to search for news stories about those names plus words like development, houses, planned, green-belt, and objection. Is there a local newspaper website you can search too? Local blogs run by Not In My Backyard residents with their ear to the ground? Almost certainly there will be local Facebook groups where a lot of this is fought out.

In England, DEFRA maintains the Magic Map services which can be used to check for land designations including Ancient Woodland, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Sites of Special Scientific Interest, and previous forestry commission grants. 

Many solicitors are not comfortable with clients doing this kind of detective work themselves, but if you turn up something worrying, don’t be afraid to ask their advice. That’s what you are paying for.

Registration of the sale

Your solicitor will send you a proposed land register form to update the entry, including a plan. You should double check this is exactly what you thought it should be from the advertised details of the woodland. This is especially important if the woodland is being split from a larger property, including during the division of a larger woodland into woodlots. When I bought Century Wood, the initial draft of the plan would have deprived me of several acres compared to the advertised boundary and its line on the ground marked with paint on the trees. 

If the woodland is being created as a new property, this is also the point at which its name in the Land Registry can be chosen. The retail vendors typically invent names when advertising woodlands, but you do not have to go along with their choice on the first registration of it as separate property. 

Once all the paperwork is agreed, contracts or missives are exchanged and the date of settlement or completion is agreed. At that point, the money passes through the solicitors’ accounts in a trusted way and the woodland becomes yours. If there is a locked gate, you should receive the key at this point. 

Next time …

So now armed with the key, you can visit your rolling acres as owner and proprietor. But what do you need to think about in your first year of ownership? In the next video I’ll talk about does and don’ts for that first year.