Honour amongst thieves

[P Prentice]

Peter the point that I am trying to get at is does the seller have to inform the other bidders that an archaeologist has suggested that there might be a cost of archaeology to be considered in the value of the land?.

if you were a chartered archaeologist maybe

buyer beware ring any bells?

[Marc Berger]

yes caveat emptor has been around awhile but not sure that it is enshrined in any constitution. But there is now also misrepresentation which these cases seem to refer to http://www.practicalconveyancing.co.uk/c...ew/7836/0/
there is also this angle https://www.gov.uk/government/publicatio...closure--2

by chartered you mean pay a tax to call yourself an archaeologist?

[drpeterwardle]

I am not sure about the legal requirement to disclosure as when I am involved in selling we make sure that the buyer know.


Evaluation is not the only way to estimate costs. In some cases it is obvious ie in a Church Yard. In other cases things like geophysics are a good tool.

Dr Peter Wardle

[Marc Berger]

Have you ever known the process taken to completed excavation pre-application?

[P Prentice]

whats to disclose? you are just a muppet with a trowel.
maybe the other buyers ascertained fromn the local mounty that an evaluation was not required. maybe they are not going to develop the field. but more likely they will find out later and get burned and you can hold your head up high at the wi

[barkingdigger]

I'm a little confused here. Were you working solely as advisor to one potential buyer? If so, your only obligation is to that buyer, giving her the best-quality advice that you can. Isn't any sales decision by the seller purely a question of who offered him the most cash? If so, then the "fault" (if it can be called such) is entirely with your client, if she didn't offer enough money for the land and was gazumped by higher bidders. If she asked you for professional advice, weighed it up, and offered what she thought was reasonable, then she cannot blame you - surely?

Naturally, if any of these facts are incorrect...

[gonetopot]

I agree, its entirely down to the buyer to have the appropriate surveys/research done and bid accordingly. If someone bids more or less, that is there perogative and the consequences theirs to bear.

Secondly, I have frequently encountered projects where the seller has deliberately discharged archaeological conditions/surveys to make there land more enticing, but they will have built this into their price, just as someone will do if they alrady have palnning permission. I don't really see this as relevent to most archaeologists; it is metaphorically over our heads!

[Dinosaur]

an archaeologist has to cost the archaeology

Surely it's up to the curator to make recommendations to feed into the planning process, and then decide what work is required as part of the development, not the archaeological contractor? That's the way it's done around here, anyway, we can put forward proposals for a scheme of archaeological works, but sometimes that just gets totally disregarded at the planning committee meeting stage for instance (ask Jack about that one!)

[Marc Berger]

Dino this goes on before the curator is involved, this is pre buying, pre application, there is not only the potential of the archaeology but all the other potential factors that might affect the granting of permission.

I agree it does not happen that often to me gonetopot in fact the last time I got it to all come together was in about 2007 when I managed to get the excavation costs as a claw back from the seller but looking back on it the buyer was switched on and draw up the contracts. This is the only client I have at the moment who has taken me up on my advice to have me along to purchase property and I am struggling to convince myself that its worth while if the other bidders don't take archaeology into consideration. What I tried to get the seller, after failing to get an evaluation, to think was that if he did not tell the other bidders about the archaeological potential that he was withholding information about the site.

If she asked you for professional advice, weighed it up, and offered what she thought was reasonable, then she cannot blame you - surely?

I am trying to convince her to have a claw back or a shared liability with the seller for the costs for any land that she buys. If it turns out that there was an archaeology required then nothings spent. I would also like to do an evaluation before costing the archaeology. I don't know totally what she tried to negotiate with the seller, if anything, about the archaeology. I know no evaluation was done. In the few conversations that I have had with her she has not seemed very convinced that the other bidders either took the archaeology into consideration or cared and I presume because the seller did not tell them. I charged her £75 for me time and I not sure she will use me again.

forming in the back of my mind was that every time I see some land/property for sale I could pop my card into the sellers and offer to do a cheap and inexpensive evaluation.

whats to disclose? you are just a muppet with a trowel.....but more likely they will find out later and get burned

yes and we all get to work for another miserable client who thinks we are out to burn them and that we are all in it together and presumably the seller gets a warm sense of pride from having had one over the archaeologists. It seems they changed the caveat emptor on contaminated land and maybe this is the model that needs to be spelt out to the sellers http://www.breckland.gov.uk/content/cont...nformation after all we do little more than remove archaeological contamination

[Sith]

Let's just say that I wouldn't be betting any of my hard earned savings on property or land until I had a detailed search done by a good solicitor. That way, if I discover that the county mounty or EH believe Hadrian's palace is under my back garden and Boudicca is beneath the shed, I can claim against his Professional Indemnity insurance.