Three questions that decide everything else
Before looking at a single plot, it is worth being precise about three things, because the answers rule out most of the market and make the rest easy to compare.
- How long can this money stay invested without you needing it back? Land is illiquid, and a forced sale is where returns go to die.
- Do you need income from it, or only a sale at the end? Bare land produces nothing in the meantime; a tenanted commercial unit does.
- What would you do if the timeline doubled? If the honest answer is uncomfortable, the allocation is too large.
Land use is the thing to verify
The single most important fact about a piece of land is what it is legally permitted to be used for right now. Agricultural, residential, commercial, industrial and institutional are different categories with different rules, different values and different buyers.
A great deal of the disappointment in land investment comes from paying a price that assumed one category while holding land that is registered as another. Conversion from one use to another is a formal process with an uncertain outcome and no fixed timeline. It may happen. It may not. It should never be the basis of the price you pay.
- The current recorded land use, confirmed from the record rather than from a brochure.
- Whether the land falls inside a notified authority area or an acquisition plan, which changes what an owner can do with it.
- Clear title with an unbroken chain, and no pending litigation or encumbrance.
- Actual physical access — a legal right of way that exists on paper and on the ground.
- Whether the boundaries on the record match the boundaries on site.
What we will and will not tell you
We will tell you what has recently transacted in a location, what the current permitted use is, what the authority's published position is, and where we think the practical risks sit. That is market knowledge and it is genuinely useful.
We will not tell you what a plot will be worth in five years, that a particular infrastructure project will complete on schedule, or that any purchase will appreciate. Nobody credible can, and in our experience anyone who does is selling something rather than advising you.