9 replies to this topic

[jav]

Just in process of buying a piece of land that has just come up for sale. 17acres consisting of 3 fields and plenty of running water. The land is 70,000 and we are putting up 35,000. Which means we are looking for a mortgage of 35,000.

Now we have plenty of ideas, pigs, tacking out for horses, and poultry consisting of ornamental fowl.

Problem is - it is much harder to get an agricultural mortgage, and they want a basic business plan. I am not afraid of hard work, and my partner has worked on a farm for many years.

But putting it on paper is giving me a headache, to be honest seems to be the one thing i'm worried about, as seems to be everything rides on this.

Any advice would be really appreciated, and can anyone show me what type of thing they are looking for.

Thanks yet again !

[che]

Hi  we are purchasing our land via business loan from Lloyds.  They gave us a disk for a free trial of Sage software to produce a business Plan .  It  takes you through step by step.  A great user friendly piece of kit which gives a professional result.  It also gives examples to get you started in each section,  Hope this is of use to you DAVE C

[Romany]

Hi
I'm currently doing a business plan along the lines of growing herbs, for my degree in Herbal Medicine (in fact that is how I came across this site).  I'm struggling a bit too, but basically if you can research similar businesses to yours (the Market Research part of the plan) it may give you ideas.  One of the books I'm reading at the moment is called 'Alpha Teach Yourself Business Plans in 24 Hours', written by Michael Miller and published by Alpha.  Admittedly it's American but is very helpful, with evedrything broken down into easy 1 hour chunks.  Another book I've read previously is 'Perfect Business Plans' (Ron Johnson, Random House).  Both were in my local library.  

As suggested by other posters, banks have plenty of software and most of them make this available online (so no need to trudge around town!).  Business Link is also very useful with a mine of information on just about everything!
Good luck!
Romany

[Groundhog]

You might find a business loan from one of the banks that have an Agric arm such as Nat West is better so long as you have evidence of ability to service the loan and seeing as you are putting in 50% they might be worth a try if you have a background in Agriculture that helps.They tend to work on a 70 to 30% ratio but you can get them for 60 to 40%

[alanandastrid]

I'm working on a paper copy of a general purpose business plan for smallholding and hope to have it posted up by early next week on the forum.

I'm new to this web site but not new to the book or the notion of creating a business plan for a new venture.

But I'd really like to see a template if you have one....24 acre, livestock, with a bit of woodland???

[Cornish Gems]

The template for a Business Plan mentioned by Dave can be downloaded from the pinned topic called 'Business Plan - Download' in 'Functional and Means Tests'.

Good luck.

PS - you mention the book - would recommend you pm Steve so that you can be classed as a 'Book Owner' and be able to fully access every one of the forums.

[Saleh]

Hi we are purchasing our land via business loan from Lloyds. They gave us a disk for a free trial of Sage software to produce a business Plan . It takes you through step by step. A great user friendly piece of kit which gives a professional result. It also gives examples to get you started in each section, Hope this is of use to you DAVE C

Thanks for this, I'm struggling with the business plan side of it too. I'm going to look into the Sage software

[RichardD]

Google search - "agricultural appraisal report" there are many examples from which you can adapt to your circumstances - you should already know what you propose to do, you just need to articulate it to the LPA in roughly the same format - also have a good read of PPS 7 (and I see you are already a book owner - tacking out horses or any other equestrian enterprise is not an agricultural use of land unless those horses are "employed" in agriculture).

[ruthie]

Hi Richard

We don't have horses, after reading the book we never went in to horses (WEll !!!!!!!! LOL)
long story, but we had the mortgage ok. That post was March 2010, learnt a lot since then, maybe read our diary Rafferty at the travs. But always need good advice, not very nice neighbours.

Thank you anyway

Ruthie