Clinching the Deal

On August 5th I emailed John Clegg with an offer of £55k subject to contract for Ware Park Wood; 10% more than the guide price. I had already been in contact with Read Cooper Solicitors who specialise in forestry conveyancing and they had agreed to act for me. Over the next few weeks I contacted John Clegg several times. For a while mine was the only offer and a bit later it was referred to as the highest current offer but then someone apparently bid £57k and on August 25th I got an email from John Clegg saying they had received instructions from the vendor to invite all interested parties to submit their best offer by mid-day on Friday September 2nd. Obviously I didn’t want to pay more than neccessary but I had no idea how high the other interested parties were willing to go. On the other hand Ware Park Wood was the most suitable place I had found and I didn’t want to start looking again so I needed to be reasonably sure of getting it. After much deliberation I emailed John Clegg on the morning of September 2nd with an offer of £62,520 subject to contract and on September 5th I got an email back saying that my offer had been accepted!

On September 15th I travelled to Thame in Oxfordshire to visit the offices of Read Cooper. I took my passport and other ID for the required identity check and had a good discussion with Peter Read. I told him that I wanted to buy the property jointly with my mother and he said that would not be a problem but we would have to decide whether we wanted to be joint tennants or tennants in common (we chose the former). Peter explained the costs involved and as well as the local search he recommended getting a chancel search and a desktop environmental search. Before leaving I wrote him a check for £600 as payment on account.

The first search to come back was the chancel search, which cost £21.22 + VAT. This revealed only that the property is located in a parish which could charge for repairs to the chancel and I was given three options; do nothing, take out indemnity insurance or carry out further investigation. If you are interested you should take a look at www.chancel.org.uk but to cut a long story short I decided to take out indemnity insurance that Peter said he could arrange for a one off payment of £245 (which would also cover any future owners if we decided to sell the property).

Next I received the results of the desktop environmental search, which cost £149 + VAT. This came in the form of a very comprehensive report by GroundSure that did not reveal any major issues, though it did give the size of the site as only 2.91 ha as opposed to the 3.03 ha claimed on John Clegg’s brochure.

On October 14th Peter Read sent me the results of the local search, which cost £203. This covered all sorts of stuff but there were no major surprises. It did reveal that the property was affected by a 1981 East Herts District Council Tree Preservation Order and he asked the sellers solicitors to provide a copy. For some reason this took a while but on November 4th Peter sent me a copy of the TPO. I was expecting it to list a few specific trees and was surprised to discover that it is actually a blanket order covering a large part of Ware Park, including the vast majority of the land I was buying. This seemed like it might be a serious problem but there appeared to be a get-out clause which stated that the order would not apply to work carried out in accordance with a plan of operations approved by the Forestry Comission. Still, I wanted to seek advice on the matter so I made some phone calls. First I spoke to Malcolm Amey, the East Herts District Council Arboricultural Officer, who said that blanket TPOs are not generally used now and that the existing one (which he referred to as TPO 216) was not intended to stand in the way of good woodland management practices. He also said that it only applies to trees that were growing at the time the order was made, which means trees less than 30 years old (such as the numerous young sycamores) are not covered. Next I spoke to Alastair Stirling, one of the woodland officers from the Forestry Commission East of England regional team. He had some helpful advice and again said that the TPO should not be used to prevent good management. Finally I spoke to Crispin Golding of UPM Tilhill who echoed Alastair’s advice and convinced me to proceed regardless of the order.

So finally everything seemed good to go. My mother and I signed the contract and the transfer deed and posted them off to Read Cooper. It took a few weeks for the vendor’s solicitor to gather signatures on the transfer deed because there were three registered owners on the title and they didn’t all live at the same address, but on November 29th I finally got an email from Read Cooper saying that we were ready to proceed. The following day I went to my bank to transfer the amount required for completion and on December 1st 2011, four and a half months after first going to view it, I got an email confirming that my mother and I were the new owners of Ware Park Wood!

How We Got Here

I was born and raised in Hertfordshire but school holidays were often spent at a cottage in the Kielder Forest where my grandfather worked as a surveyor for the Forestry Commission. I loved climbing the giant douglas fir down by stream and enjoyed learning to split logs for the fire. When I left school I went to the University of Birmingham to study mechanical engineering then to the United States. I spent nearly five years at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire where every Fall coach-loads of “leaf peepers” would arrive from afar to be amazed by the spectacular autumn colours. When I returned to the UK in 1990 I moved back with my parents in Hatfield and eventually got a job at Brickendonbury where I used to go cross-country running at lunchtime in the surrounding woods. In 1994 I bought my own house in Hatfield (a three bedroom mid terrace for £50k) and in 1999 I got a new job in Hatfield, working as a systems and applications manager at the University of Hertfordshire.

By 2004 it was starting to feel like I was stuck in a rut and I got involved in a plan to set up a housing co-op which would buy a 10 acre smallholding in Wales. I handed in my notice and left work but the plan did not come to fruition and I ended up doing a variety of things including tree planting in Pembrokeshire. I registered as self employed when I was offered a contract to do some IT work from home over the Internet but when the contract ended I didn’t make an effort to find another one and drifted into doing odd jobs like dog walking and gardening. I often found myself working for a friend who is an arborist and although it could be exhausting carrying logs or dragging branches all day I much preferred it to sitting in front of a computer for a living. By 2009 I had made enough local connections that I felt ready to commit to staying in the area long term, and with my savings earning so little interest I decided to try investing the bulk of my money in woodland. My mother also wanted to take some of her money out of the banking system and she thought it was a good idea so between us we had about £60k to play with.

I registered on the website of John Clegg & Co and entered my requirements, which were for a reasonably nearby property (I selected Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire) priced at under $100k. Nothing was coming up in Hertfordshire so in November 2009 I went to look at Breaches Wood in Buckinghamshire. It was a longer journey than I wanted and access was quite poor but I was planning to put in an offer until it emerged that the sporting rights were (contrary to the sales brochure) not included. Unfortunately a lot of woodlands have had the sporting rights leased out which means you have to accept the possibility that a gun club could come wandering through at any time. In July 2010 I went to look at College Wood in Bedfordshire even though it was a bit out of my price range. I told some friends about it and they put in an offer but were outbid. In March this year another friend told me he was looking at Backlane Wood in Hertfordshire and asked if I was interested in buying it jointly. I considered it but ended up letting him go it alone. In May I got an email from John Clegg about a Hertfordshire property called Biggs Grove at Wormley West End. Biggs Grove was jointly owned and being split into two lots, only one of which was for sale. There were a few problems including an issue about the shared access track but I ended up making an offer. After a while John Clegg told me they had received a better offer and asked if I wanted to bid again but I was not willing to go any higher so I let it go.

By now I was getting a bit disillusioned and was even thinking about other things to do with my money when in July I got an email from John Clegg about another Hertfordshire property which they were calling Ware Park Wood, a three hectare broadleaved woodland in the historic setting of Ware Park (see brochure). I went to look at it on July 16th and it seemed to match my requirements; it was freehold, there was good access, the sporting rights had not been let out, it was only about 20 minutes walk from Hertford East Station and I could cycle there quite easily from Hatfield along a mainly off-road route. It also looked like it had not been actively managed for a long time so there was plenty of scope for me to improve it. I got on the Land Registry website, found the property described as “land at Ware Park, Hertfordshire” with title number HD157927 and paid £8 for a copy of the register and plan. The guide price was £50k and on August 5th after discussing it with my mother I put in an offer of £55k subject to contract. In my next entry I will explain what was involved in completing the purchase.