Buying the land next door

Until we heard that we would be getting the loan for the house, there was no certainty about the whole project. We had been waiting for that approval for as long time.
The prospect of immediately being able to start construction brought home the stage of procedings that we are now at. With characteristic dithering and apprehension I have decided to pursue purchasing the adjoining land.

One of the things that brought this on was seeing how our house will fit our small piece of land quite well, but that it has a poor relationship with the larger piece of land that we were hoping to buy later. If the bank would give us the money, it will be better to but the land at the outset and incorporate it into the design.

Fortunately we were aware of this when designing the house and it is desinged such that the house will fit as well onto the two pieces of land as just the one.

On hearing from the bank that they had approved the loan I asked them for the extra for the land. As they have stopped doing martgages for buying land with later construction (last month) we will have to apply for a new loan for the land, and then re-apply for the building loan (due to the new location of the house and our new financial situation).

In applying for the land loan we will need a contact of purchase (subject to financing), which in turn requires fixing a price with the current owner. So this was the first thing to sort (and we are awaiting his response to our offer). Also, the survey will need to be done again and the planning application will have to be amended.

This is all going to put the project back a month or two and we will incur some extra bills, but it seems the only way to go about things. It could be said that we should have applied for planning for the house on both bits of land from the start, but the builder wouldn't do this as we only owned one and and that getting a loan for just that one would be hard enough.

So now we are waiting for a reponse from the owner of the land. Should be in by next Tuesday.