Should I Sell My Land Now or Wait? What Really Decides the Timing

Most owners who ask this question are really asking two different things. One is about the market: will the land be worth more in two or five years? The other is about the land itself: will its chances of planning permission be better or worse later? The first cannot be answered with any honesty. The second often can, because it depends on published figures, council timetables and rules that are written down.

The rest of this guide takes each factor in turn, with the source for every figure, and then sets out the case for waiting as fairly as the case for acting. The last sections explain how an option agreement fits the timing question, because under an option the planning work and the decision to sell happen on a different clock from the one most owners imagine.

In December 2024 the government made delivering 1.5 million homes over five years a milestone of its Plan for Change, and announced a revised way of working out housing need with a combined total of 370,000 homes a year across England. That ambition sits behind the planning changes that followed, including the National Planning Policy Framework rewritten in August 2026.

The figure for each council comes from a formula called the standard method. Planning practice guidance explains that it starts from a baseline of 0.8% of the existing housing stock in the area. It then adds more where homes are expensive compared with local earnings: for each 1% by which the ratio of house prices to earnings is above 5, the baseline goes up by 0.95%. The guidance calls the result a minimum annual housing need figure, not a target the council must adopt as it stands.

The example shows why the effect on landowners is uneven. Where homes are least affordable compared with earnings, the figure rises furthest. Where the standard method figure is higher than the requirement in a council's existing plan, the next plan has to find room for more homes than the last one did, and that means looking at land it has not looked at before.

There is a second link. Under the housing annex of the August 2026 framework, when the housing figure in an adopted plan passes five years of age, supply is no longer tested against that figure but against the standard method. So an ageing plan and a rising figure can together change a council's position quickly, and that position is what the next section is about.

The National Planning Policy Framework of August 2026 contains a policy called S5, for development outside settlements. For housing, one of its routes covers land physically well related to an existing settlement, of a scale the infrastructure can take, where there is evidenced unmet need. The framework names two measures. Where a council scores under 75% in the Housing Delivery Test, unmet need is treated as evidenced. A council that cannot show a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites has a shortfall that is evidence of unmet need to be weighed, not an automatic finding.

The Housing Delivery Test compares the homes built in a district over three years with the number needed. The 2025 measurement, published by the government on 17 August 2026, covers the financial years 2022/23 to 2024/25. Of the 301 councils measured, 93 scored below 75%. The framework's housing annex sets out what each band means.

Two limits matter. S5 does not apply in the Green Belt, where grey belt land has its own test of need, usually shown by a supply short of five years or a result below 75%, with the Golden Rules on larger schemes. And meeting the need test does not settle a case by itself: the land must still be well related to the settlement, and flood risk, access, landscape and heritage still count.

For timing, the important point is that both measures move. The Housing Delivery Test is an annual measurement, so a council can fall below 75% in one edition and climb back above it in the next, as completions rise or fall. Five-year supply positions are restated as councils publish new monitoring figures, and a newly adopted plan brings a new requirement to measure supply against. These are the clearest examples of a window that opens or shuts on published evidence rather than on anyone's forecast, and they are the reason an owner in a district that is short of homes has more to consider than an owner in one that is not.

A local plan is the council's document setting out where new homes will go in the years ahead. A new system for preparing plans came into force on 25 March 2026. The government's rollout guidance explains that a council's 30-month plan-making timetable starts when it publishes its first gateway self-assessment.

The rollout was staged. A group of 39 councils named in the guidance was required to publish a notice of intention to begin a new plan by 30 June 2026, and to follow it with the gateway self-assessment by 31 October 2026. Most councils still preparing a plan under the old system were given a deadline of 31 December 2026 to submit it for examination, while plans published by 12 March 2025 that met less than 80% of local housing need were expected to be submitted by 12 June 2026. For an owner in a district whose next plan has not yet begun, the council's notice that it is starting one is a moment worth knowing about.

The reason is simple. Early in a plan, councils run a call for sites: an invitation to owners, or people acting with their agreement, to put land forward for assessment. Sites put forward then are measured against the same criteria and can be carried through each consultation. Land that comes forward after the council has chosen its sites has missed that assessment, and usually waits for a review or the next plan. How each stage runs, and what a good submission holds, is set out in our call for sites guide rather than repeated here.

Some signs that a window may be open in your district can be checked from the council's website:

• The council has published a notice that it is starting a new local plan, or a timetable called a local development scheme with a new plan in it.
• A call for sites, or a first scoping consultation, is open or has been announced.
• The council's adopted plan is more than five years old, so its housing figure has been replaced by the standard method.
• The council scored below 75% in the latest Housing Delivery Test.
• The council's latest housing land supply statement shows less than five years, and the land is outside the Green Belt.

None of these on its own decides anything for a particular field. Together they show whether the council is looking for land and how much weight unmet need carries in decisions, and both can change from one year to the next.

For farmland as farmland, Strutt and Parker's figures for the first nine months of 2026, reported by Farmers Weekly on 12 October 2026, averaged £10,600 an acre for arable land and £8,700 for pasture, each £200 an acre higher than a year before. Not every published measure moved the same way over that period, and our guide to what an acre of land is worth sets the indices side by side and explains why they differ.

Those are past figures, and they are averages for land bought and sold for farming. They say nothing reliable about the years ahead, and they are not what decides the value of a field with a realistic chance of planning permission. What land with planning permission is worth depends on what new homes sell for in that place, and on everything a scheme has to pay for first: building costs, roads and drainage, affordable homes, biodiversity net gain, the Community Infrastructure Levy, Section 106 contributions and the builder's own return. Any of those can rise or fall while an owner waits, and they do not move together.

For a field without planning permission, the larger question is usually not the market at all but whether permission can be secured, and on what terms. That depends on the policy position in the sections above, on the land's own constraints, and on the work done to prepare a case. Those are the things worth checking before deciding to wait for prices.

HMRC's policy paper on the changes explains that from 6 April 2026 a £2.5 million allowance applies to the combined value of property qualifying for 100% agricultural property relief and business property relief. Above it, relief is at 50%. A widow, widower or surviving civil partner can take over whatever part of the allowance was not used, and the option of paying by interest-free annual instalments over ten years has been extended.

Two parts of the change bear on timing. The first is gifts. The same paper explains that lifetime gifts made on or after 30 October 2024 fall under the new rules where the giver dies on or after 6 April 2026 within seven years of the gift. A gift is brought back into the inheritance tax calculation when the giver dies within seven years of making it, so for a family that has already decided to pass land down in a lifetime, the date of the gift is the date from which those seven years run.

The second is the size of the estate. For a family whose qualifying farm and business assets are worth less than the allowance, or less than twice it for a married couple or civil partners who pass the unused allowance on, the change may make little practical difference. For larger estates, owners are weighing whether to restructure, give land to the next generation, or sell part of the land to fund the tax that will one day fall due.

Selling is not automatically the answer. Cash is not agricultural or business property, so it qualifies for neither relief, and land sold and kept as money can leave an estate worse off for inheritance tax. Our guide to tax when selling land for development works through that comparison with an example, and where land is already held by executors, our guide to probate and selling land covers the estate's side.

Capital gains tax is charged on the increase in value between the time you acquired land, by purchase or inheritance, and the time you dispose of it. HMRC's published table of rates and annual tax-free allowances shows how the position for an individual selling land has moved.

Over those years the tax on a sale of land rose in three ways: the main rates went up from 30 October 2024, the allowance fell from £12,300 to £3,000, and the rate under Business Asset Disposal Relief, which some retiring farmers use, climbed from 10% to 18%. One of those changes took effect part way through a tax year, on 30 October 2024, rather than from the following 6 April.

That history is not a forecast, and it cuts both ways for anyone tempted to time a sale around tax. Rates could rise again, stay where they are or fall, and a sale arranged in a hurry to beat a rumoured change can cost more in a poor deal than it saves in tax. The tax is charged on the gain whenever you sell, and the tax guide linked above explains when a sale counts as made for tax purposes and how an option fee is treated.

Hope value is the extra a buyer will pay for land because of the prospect, not the certainty, of planning permission in future. Compensation for land taken under a compulsory purchase order, often shortened to CPO, ordinarily reflects the open market, so it can include hope value. Since 30 April 2024 in England, section 14A of the Land Compensation Act 1961, inserted by section 190 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, has allowed some orders to set that prospect aside and value the land as if no planning permission would be granted for development on it.

The government's guidance on the power to remove hope value sets out its scope:

• It applies only where a direction is included in the compulsory purchase order. Without one, compensation is assessed in the normal way.
• Only certain bodies may seek one, including councils, Homes England, the Greater London Authority, development corporations and some NHS bodies.
• The scheme must include public sector led affordable or social housing, health or education uses. The authority submits a statement of commitments with the order, and where the order is made under the housing and regeneration powers the Act lists, that statement must include a number of affordable homes.
• The order must be confirmed, for land in England by the Secretary of State, who may leave the direction in only on being satisfied that the public interest justifies it. The guidance expects the authority to show compelling reasons, with evidence of the public needs the scheme will meet, its impact on the owners affected and how the two have been balanced.
• A planning permission already granted still counts. The assumption is that no further permission would be granted, so land that already has permission keeps that value in the calculation. What cannot be used is a certificate of appropriate alternative development, the council's statement of what it would have permitted had there been no scheme.

For the great majority of fields, none of this will ever arise, because most land is never the subject of a compulsory purchase order at all. Where an owner's land lies in an area a public body has identified for a scheme of that kind, the question is real and specific, and it calls for advice on that land. Hope value in an ordinary sale, and how it differs from the value of land with permission, belongs to our guide on how the price for your land is worked out.

The age profile of farming shapes many of these decisions. Defra's survey of the agricultural workforce at 1 June 2026 found that 36.1% of principal farmers and holders were aged 65 or over, and 6.8% were under 35. Questions about who will farm the land next, and whether anyone will, sit behind a large share of the land that comes forward.

The factors that most often bear on timing are these:

• Age and health. Planning for land with development potential takes time, and an owner who wants to see the matter settled in their lifetime, or to make provision while they can, may have more reason to start than one with decades ahead.
• Succession. Whether a son, daughter or someone else will take on the farm changes what a field is for. Land no longer needed for the business is often the natural part to put forward, while the core of the farm carries on.
• Everyone who owns the land. Where land is held jointly, by brothers and sisters, trustees or executors, every legal owner has to sign. A family that has not yet agreed is rarely helped by hurrying.
• The farm business. A field may be part of a rotation, a tenancy, a grazing arrangement or an environmental scheme, and each has its own notice periods and commitments.
• What the money is for. Retirement, paying off borrowing, buying land elsewhere, helping children or funding a future tax bill each lead to a different answer on timing, and each is worth discussing with an accountant early.
• The paperwork. Deeds, title plans, any mortgage and any tenancy agreement take time to gather, especially where land has been in a family for generations and has never been registered.

None of these has a right answer that a stranger can give you. They are the questions that usually decide when a family moves, and they are worth talking through at home before any national policy is weighed.

• The council has just chosen its sites. If a plan has been adopted or examined in the last year or two without your land, and the council meets its housing targets, the next plan may be the realistic route. Even then, the evidence that gets land into a plan is gathered long before the plan is adopted.
• The land is not yet well related to the settlement. A field cut off from a village by other land today can sit next to it once that land is built on. National policy looks at the relationship on the ground, and that relationship can change.
• The family is not ready. An estate in probate, owners who disagree, or a death in the family are all good reasons to give a decision time. An unsettled family makes a poor seller of anything.
• Tax advice points that way. For some estates, keeping land until death is the better tax outcome, for the reasons covered in the inheritance tax section. That is a decision for the family and its adviser.
• A tenancy or scheme needs to run its course. An agricultural tenancy or an environmental agreement with years left may decide the practical timetable whatever else happens.
• The land earns its keep. A field that is farmed, grazed or let produces an income while the family thinks, and holding it costs little.

What these have in common is that each is a reason specific to the land or the family. Waiting for its own sake, in the hope that the right moment will make itself obvious, is a different thing. The figures that matter most, the council's housing position and its plan timetable, are published, and they can be looked up rather than guessed.

There is also a middle course that many owners do not realise is open to them. Under an option agreement the planning work can begin while the family keeps the land, keeps farming it and keeps its income, and the sale itself happens only if permission is secured. The next section explains how that works.

Seen from the timing question, three things follow. The price is known before any planning money is spent, so the family can plan around a figure, and the price is not reduced if costs rise during planning. The cost of the planning work, which on a larger site can reach £300,000, is ours, so starting does not mean the family spending money in the hope of a result. And because you keep using the land, starting the planning work does not mean giving anything up while it is under way.

That is why an option suits owners who see a window in their district but are not ready to part with the land on the spot. It also suits families in the opposite position, who would like to settle matters but whose land needs planning work before anyone can say what it could become. Our guide to option agreements explains the agreement itself, and our guide to selling with or without planning permission compares the routes for an owner who is weighing whether to wait until permission is in place.

The simplest way to find out where your own land stands is a free desktop review. We study your land from maps and public records alongside the council's housing figures and plan timetable, then give you a straight answer on its prospects, free and with no obligation.