How to buy a wood

Owning a copse can be a dream come true. But looking after one is no picnic, says Ginetta Vedrickas

(John Lawrence)

Buying a holiday home and escaping to the country might seem like an unnecessary extravagance in the current climate, but there is another way of owning a slice of rural bliss without having to invest in bricks and mortar. The property market may be less than buoyant right now, but sales of woodland are booming.

Alex Harvey, of estate agents King & Chasemore, is based in West Sussex where woodland typically nets around £3,000 per acre. A recent listing of 18 acres drew a flurry of interest, eventually selling for £80,000 to two separate buyers who met on a viewing. "It's quirky, but they met in the woodland and had the confidence to buy together," says Harvey, who believes a stagnating property market could be firing the interest for woodland.

Rather than wanting land to build upon most of the interest came from conservationists and those wanting to use the woods for their own leisure.

So despite the fact that residential use is typically very limited – only camping and occasional caravan use – buying woodland has never been more popular according to Simon Feltham of www.woodlands.co.uk. Buyers include the retired and young families and, in contrast to the property market's peaks and troughs, prices typically increase steadily year after year. Howerver, Feltham advises against pure investment purchases. "Woodland hasn't been affected by the downturn and prices hold their own. Buyers tend to buy near their homes and use their woods more frequently than they would a holiday home."

"People enjoy buying woodland to picnic and walk in, anything you might like to do after a nice Sunday lunch," says Harvey, who has many city dwellers seeking rural retreats on his books. Low-maintenance woodland is popular, but homes with land often prove harder to sell: "It depends how the land is arranged. We're currently marketing a property with 23 acres of paddocks because the vendor is frustrated at having to mow and manage it."

Thanks to growing interest, specialist firms are proliferating and sites such as www.woods4sale.co.uk list tempting plots around the country. In Kent's Bluebell Woods, a four-and-a-half acre plot is priced at £34,500. In neighbouring East Sussex, Lunar Wood, a 14-acre plot within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty near Hadlow Down, is for sale at £89,000. Most sites also offer crucial advice on planning permission and maintenance.

Finding a rural plot is relatively easy and the buying process is straightforward, but buyers need to be beware of 'plot merchants' who sell woodland with false promises of easily obtainable planning permission. And there are also concerns that new owners, unlike traditonal woodland managers, don't have the necessary coppicing or land management skills to ensure biodiversity and shelter for wildlife.

Despite these challenges though growing numbers of buyers are trying to capture a slice of woodland magic. Includung Jill Swan who owns an idyllic seaside home in Whitstable but, rather than trading up to a property with more land, she instead decided to remortgaged her home to buy a nearby 23-acre woodland plot for £60,000. Despite the hot summer, she prefers the seclusion of her own woodland to the coast: "The seaside is heaving so you're jostling for position, but here it's peaceful and quiet." Jill admits to a lengthy fascination with trees, "probably from spending my formative years parked outside in a pram staring upwards" and now visits her woods daily to log and count them. Jill now hopes to run her woodland as a business venture: "I'm hoping to turn it into an educational project where people can come and learn."

While there are restrictions on cutting down trees – a certain percentage may be chopped down and either used as heating for wood burning stoves or sold on – it can be a profitable enterprise. "Woods can pay for themselves. I'm hoping to make a small profit this year," says Jill.

Her friends and family are also looking forward to holidays in her woodland, although Jill has spent just one night there so far. "It was like Piccadilly Circus, and it was so noisy. I could hear birds, foxes and badgers and, at one point, I pointed my torch into pitch blackness to see two eyes staring back at me. I still don't know what they were."

Sourcing woodland in an urban setting is rare, particularly if it comes with planning permission. However agents Wooster and Stock are marketing a quarter of an acre plot in Grove Park, south London, which comes complete with mature trees and planning permission for a five-bedroom house. "It's very rare that something like this comes on. Two years ago it would have flown out of the window, but it will sell to someone looking for something special," says Luke Wooster.

The plot's current owner, an architect, is well versed in the rigours of the planning process but, despite this, it still took almost five years to get full planning permission. "Anyone without that sort of knowledge would have been incredibly frustrated," says Wooster. Build costs are estimated at around £800,000-£1,000,000 on top of the plot itself, which is for sale at £650,000. However, the eventual buyer will end up with a property set among mature trees, which come with a preservation order, where the hustle and bustle of city living isn't an issue.

"Nobody overlooks you and you can't see another house, yet you are within 15 minutes of the city." Prospective buyers will need to bring with them more than imagination: "It's incredibly overgrown with lots of nettles. You will definitely need long trousers."