At Home with Alvin Hall
Buying undeveloped land that can be built on is the new craze - and given the supply and demand equation in relation to the UK's housing needs it is not difficult to see why.
Look around your home town and a pound to a penny says that you will find one property or another appearing on land that you would not have thought could contain such development.
Yet it is all the rage as back gardens fall into the hands of developers and homes start to sprout up in the most unlikely of places. That means there is money to be made from owning land that has building potential and today land speculation is all the rage.
How often have you heard about substantial profits from buying land cheaply and obtaining residential planning consent? How often have you thought that the market is only available
to developers and professional speculators?
Buying land for sale in Britain appears attractive during a period when property still seems
to be the best and the safest investment.
But there are a number of factors that the investor new to the potential in self-build land needs to know about, even though investment land for sale has been considered by many to have performed well over the past few years.
The value of land has risen dramatically in recent years (almost 24 per cent last year), and with the current shortage of affordable housing, the value of self-build land development looks set to rise again.
This, coupled with the fact that land is seen as a real investment and that the supply of self-build land cannot be manufactured out of nothing, shows why building plots of land for sale are viewed by many as an attractive investment opportunity.
Even so people buy land for different reasons. Some wish only to care for animals or use their land as a pony paddock; others take a long term investment perspective and hold on to their building plots of land for sale for many years, waiting for the value to appreciate. Many people also use their plot as self-build land to build their own `dream' home.
The internet now allows land agents to market plots of self-build land for sale to the general public rather than just public bodies, farmers and the landed gentry as previously.
Because you are entering an unknown, a land agent can help with the buying process. To the man in the street, or even to those more experienced in financial matters, self-build land development is probably a foreign business. Many people are experienced in the purchase of new homes, and there is some overlap between this and the purchase of land, but there is also a great deal of territory between the two. As with any investment, there is an element of risk with investment land. And, of course, it is about speculation and having an eye on the long game. The government has already said that to cope with the demand for housing in London green belt areas will need to be developed. The figures suggest 40 per cent development of Greenfield land and 60 per cent of Brownfield sites.
The gamble here is that speculative land investment in plots without planning permission in areas of high housing need is done with the longer term view in mind and the hope and belief that planning permission will be granted in years to come. Having gained planning permission the land may then increase in value 10 over.
So a cool head and a rational approach are vital.
Promoters of land speculation often tell you: "You don't wait to land, you buy land and wait."
To this end there is a lot of activity from land agents particular across South East England. They specialise in land for sale close to existing housing that has been identified as having
a good medium to long-term chance of gaining planning permission for residential housing.
Residential-sized plots of land for sale are then offered to the public allowing them to share
in possible future development gains and, with the dotcom crash and the recent accounting scandals and the simplicity and transparency of investment, building plots for sale has gained many followers.
There are no complicated concepts that investors need to understand with land, just that
there is an ever-increasing demand for building and for sale and a restricted supply of plots for sale.
The advantages are:

• Land is real.
• Unlike shares land is tangible - it can be visited, seen and walked on.
• There is a limited supply on land.
• England is a small country with the majority of the population wanting to live in the South East.
• It is easy to understand and seen as a solid investment.
• Land is not open to accounting scandals and it is clear when property prices are going up (or down) and the reason for this movement.
• It is a cheap way to invest in property.
• A semi-detached house in the South East of England can easily cost £250,000. A residential-sized plot of land in the South East of England, close to existing residential homes, can be bought from around £15,000.
• Land increases in value in two ways.
• By increasing property values (due to demand outstripping supply).
• By land gaining permission to have houses built on it.

For example, a £15,000 plot of land in the South East that gains planning permission to build a four bedroomed detached house on, would then be worth in the region of £200,000 to a builder wanting to put a £600,000 house on the land.
It is, therefore, easy to see why land speculation is the new Klondike. The potential returns outstrip any other investment by miles. But like all these `too good to be true' deals you need to approach the business with a cool head.
Reproduced from At Home with Alvin Hall
Biography
Alvin D. Hall, one of Wall Street's, most respected investment educators, is president of his own company, which designs and conducts training courses about the investments markets and publishes training materials that support these courses. His domestic and international clients include major exchanges, brokerage firms, banks, mutual fund companies, regulatory organisations, and vendors that provide technical and information services to the financial industry. In the United Kingdom, he has hosted two popular BBC series on investing: Alvin Hall's Guide to Successful Investing and Investing for All with Alvin Hall.