Land buying made easy

England’s land may be green and pleasant, but it has also been remarkably hard to buy. Now, a new digital marketplace, Addland (www.addland.com), promises to make the process of finding land for sale (and researching the details of a particular plot) much easier. ‘Addland was born out of the idea that the digital footprint of land is incredibly fragmented: as a seller you are listing your land on many different platforms; as a buyer, you are having to go to many different platforms. Also, doing due diligence on land is either very manual or very expensive,’ says the company’s founder, Thomas Mcalpine. ‘We thought of building a single destination that would bring together marketplace and research.’ Initially developed in April and relaunched in October, the map-based site now has about 5,000 listings, ranging from woodland and equestrian property to shoots, riverbanks with fishing rights and country estates. Mr Mcalpine explains it was designed for rural property buyers, putting the power back in their hands by allowing them to access as much information as possible: ‘They can use our software to access all data relating to ownership, planning applications, listed buildings, flood zones and public rights of way.’

With the Environment Act coming into force, Addland is also planning to allow agents to sell biodiversity net-gain credits.