Moving boundaries

[Hecateh]

The person buying my house has pulled out at the last minute.

 

He is saying that my Estate Agent and I have both deliberately misled him and that half my front garden isn't even mine.  There is about 8m of garden, a wooden fence, a public right of way that is also on my property and then a metal fence and carpark.

The land was sold to my grandfather in 1950 and he built the bungalow that is on it so I have all relevant paperwork back to the 1800's.  

 

This is the land that was sold to Granddad on which the property now stands.  (Dick Croft had name change to High Croft and the Ministry of labour and cottages on Dick Croft are no longer there)

 

This is in my paperwork from 2000 when I bought the house. 

Looking closely at notes which I didn't even get until I paid the mortgage off and didn't really look at there was something about the land not being registered 

 

This is what the buyer has from the land registry - and why he now wants out.  

My view is that there has been an error some time in the past which has reduced the plot and that the land registry should correct this.  Alternatively if they  -refuse, I have had continuous use of this area for 19 years so am entitled to claim adverse possession.  Even the public footpath, I have been looking after it and using weedkiller to keep the way clear.  

 

 

 

[ProDave]

What does your solicitor say?  Is the disputed bit of land still unregistered?  if not who claims ownership?

 

I must admit when we bought our plot the solicitor and land registry seemed much more helpful and there was a procedure to match unregistered land with what the map shows.

[Hecateh]

The car park is registered to the council.  About 10 years ago they put the green fence in at the bottom of the car park which meant that people could no longer cut across the car park as they had been doing.  I was sent a letter at that time telling me I had to reopen the right of way across my property so - to them - it was mine anyway

 

[Hecateh]

My solicitor is a fixed fee conveyancer - not sure if he would have any idea about this or if he would charge me more than the fixed fee for his time and advice on this.

 

[Big Jimbo]

Right. I have been through something similar in the last year.... Not great. The first piece of advice i would offer is don't waste to much time or money with solicitors. I spent a lot of money with a firm of central London Lawers and eventually took it off them due to getting knowhere and spending Thousands. In my opinion you need to get all of your paperwork together and get yourself a fully qualified chartered surveyors. Do a bit of research as some are rubbish, and you want one that specialises in land.The one i used has mapped countries for governments, and recently The falkland Islands. He looked over all my paperwork, and then surveyed my land using some amazing high tech gear. He then produced a report of 150 pages..... He canged me about 8 grand + vat.  Once you have that information you have to apply to the Land Registry for Determined Boundaries. (Costs about £90) Some civil servant will then look at it, won't understand it, and will pass it up the chain to the Land Registry Lawyers. If they can get there heads around it they will then look at all of the boundaries that meet yours, and will write to the registered owners, tell them they have received a request to register boundaries that effect them. They may choose to agree with your position, and advise the land registry of that, or they might not...... If they dont agree with your position, they will be asked by the land registry to send in there information. The chances are that the land registry won't be able to say who is right, and who is wrong, so will invite you and your neighbours to sort it out and agree it between yourselves !!!!! This won't happen as other people will consider that you are trying to nick bits of there land.  You are now in what's called a BOUNDARY DISPUTE.  Get ready at this point to end up in court, fall out with your neighbours, pay a load of professionals ££££££££. A week in court will cost about £125.000. The first step is to get a professional Chartered Serveyor to look at your case. Be prepared to spend a fair few quid, and don't forget that you might end up being told that you don't own the land that you think you do.

[Hecateh]

12 minutes ago, Big Jimbo said:

Right. I have been through something similar in the last year.... Not great. The first piece of advice i would offer is don't waste to much time or money with solicitors. I spent a lot of money with a firm of central London Lawers and eventually took it off them due to getting knowhere and spending Thousands. In my opinion you need to get all of your paperwork together and get yourself a fully qualified chartered surveyors. Do a bit of research as some are rubbish, and you want one that specialises in land.The one i used has mapped countries for governments, and recently The falkland Islands. He looked over all my paperwork, and then surveyed my land using some amazing high tech gear. He then produced a report of 150 pages..... He canged me about 8 grand + vat.  Once you have that information you have to apply to the Land Registry for Determined Boundaries. (Costs about £90) Some civil servant will then look at it, won't understand it, and will pass it up the chain to the Land Registry Lawyers. If they can get there heads around it they will then look at all of the boundaries that meet yours, and will write to the registered owners, tell them they have received a request to register boundaries that effect them. They may choose to agree with your position, and advise the land registry of that, or they might not...... If they don't agree with your position, they will be asked by the land registry to send in there information. The chances are that the land registry won't be able to say who is right, and who is wrong, so will invite you and your neighbours to sort it out and agree it between yourselves !!!!! This won't happen as other people will consider that you are trying to nick bits of there land.  You are now in what's called a BOUNDARY DISPUTE.  Get ready at this point to end up in court, fall out with your neighbours, pay a load of professionals ££££££££. A week in court will cost about £125.000. The first step is to get a professional Chartered Serveyor to look at your case. Be prepared to spend a fair few quid, and don't forget that you might end up being told that you don't own the land that you think you do.

Thanks - but there are no neighbours involved.

 

The land in question is the higher bit of garden showing on picture one - and the path next to it

 

The specific bit of land isn't showing as registered to anyone and cannot belong to anyone else but me as I have the original registry showing it belongs to me.  The other side of it belongs to the  council. 

 

They sent me a letter telling me I had to maintain the right of way across this bit of  property as they were building a fence at the edge of their property

[Hecateh]

Picture 2 shows the land belongs to me, picture 3 shows the land sold to me in 2000 and picture 3 shows the current position.  

 

Not quite sure how anyone can dispute it TBH

 

[Big Jimbo]

Just because land is not registered does not mean it is not owned. You need a Chartered Surveyor who specialises in land as i have said. You will have to get the boundary registered, and to do that, you will need to prove that it is yours. if anybody want to buy your house, this will be picked up again and again by the solicitors. I should know, I've been there.

[Big Jimbo]

5 minutes ago, Hecateh said:

Picture 2 shows the land belongs to me, picture 3 shows the land sold to me in 2000 and picture 3 shows the current position.  

 

Not quite sure how anyone can dispute it TBH

 

Talk to a surveyor, and they will tell you that the pretty red line means jack all in the eyes of the law. You need to have your boundaries determined.

[Hecateh]

1 minute ago, Big Jimbo said:

Talk to a surveyor, and they will tell you that the pretty red line means jack all in the eyes of the law. You need to have your boundaries determined.

whatever

 

[Big Jimbo]

Just now, Hecateh said:

whatever

 

If you don't want the advice, don't ask. Good luck in not selling your house for a very long time

[Hecateh]

I have paperwork going back  to the 1800s.  My family have had sole use of it since 1950

My situation is clearly nothing like yours

 

I do know it needs sorting out but there is no other property that even touches it

 

Your advice has not been helpful

Edited April 11, 2019 by Hecateh
clarification

[Hecateh]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

What does your solicitor say?  Is the disputed bit of land still unregistered?  if not who claims ownership?

 

I must admit when we bought our plot the solicitor and land registry seemed much more helpful and there was a procedure to match unregistered land with what the map shows.

It's only unregistered in that it has, at some stage, been chopped off my registered land and it isn't under dispute.  As far as anyone, including the council,  is concerned it belongs to the bungalow.  It doesn't even touch anyone else's land.  It has been solely in the use of my family since 1950 and me since 2000

[ProDave]

Just now, Hecateh said:

It's only unregistered in that it has, at some stage, been chopped off my registered land and it isn't under dispute.  As far as anyone, including the council,  is concerned it belongs to the bungalow.  It doesn't even touch anyone else's land.  It has been solely in the use of my family since 1950 and me since 2000

So if it's unregistered, does it not just need a surveyor with the appropriate qualifications to re register it then?

[billt]

That's a bit unfair (about BigJimbo).

 

You (or rather the conveyancer who first registered the land and didn't do it properly) have got into a very difficult situation. No doubt you do own the land in question, but if the Land Registry map is wrong it is up to you to get the Land Registry to fix the error. If you don't the problem is going to recur. (In my experience conveyancers are pretty stupid people who can't deviate from their stupid list of questions and won't help you.)

 

In the first instance I would ask the Land Registry for their view. They are usually very helpful.

[Hecateh]

From research it seems my first port f call is to write to the land registry with the evidence I have for a mistake having been made and they will put it right.  if that doesn't work then yes 

5 minutes ago, ProDave said:

So if it's unregistered, does it not just need a surveyor with the appropriate qualifications to re register it then?

 

This is what I think I will need to do if the land registry don't agree

 

1 minute ago, billt said:

That's a bit unfair (about BigJimbo).

 

You (or rather the conveyancer who first registered the land and didn't do it properly) have got into a very difficult situation. No doubt you do own the land in question, but if the Land Registry map is wrong it is up to you to get the Land Registry to fix the error. If you don't the problem is going to recur. (In my experience conveyancers are pretty stupid people who can't deviate from their stupid list of questions and won't help you.)

 

In the first instance I would ask the Land Registry for their view. They are usually very helpful.

Yep - the land registry is my first port of call.

 

The land was registered correctly in 1950 ffs.  I have the original - it is totally correct.  Somewhere along the way it has been changed (certainly not in my time) and his 'advice' that it going to cost me hundreds of thousands, making assumptions despite not having correctly read my post is not helpful.  

40 minutes ago, Hecateh said:

The chances are that the land registry won't be able to say who is right, and who is wrong, so will invite you and your neighbours to sort it out and agree it between yourselves !!!!! This won't happen as other people will consider that you are trying to nick bits of there land.  You are now in what's called a BOUNDARY DISPUTE. 

 

It doesn't even touch a neighbour.  This is and always has been land belonging to the property for 70 years

[Hecateh]

I'm in enough of a state about this as it is ---- I don't need people catastrophising it even further

[Triassic]

I had a similar problem with a property I sold a few years ago.

 

I had to get a long term neighbour to swear a Statutory Declaration to the effect that the land was mine and had been my garden for as long as he could remember, in my case 50 years. The solicitor dealing with it got the land correctly registered and I had to purchase an indemnity to the effect that the purchaser would be covered for legal expenses should anyone disputed me registering the land.

[Roundtuit]

It might be a bit of a pain in the arse to sort out, but I can't see it being a big cost.  I'd speak to the Land Registry first.  If they cant sort it internally,  engage a solicitor (not a conveyancer for anything other than bog-standard..) to register the land as yours using the evidence you've provided here.  A few weeks and a couple of hundred quid later and this will be just a bad dream... ??

[Hecateh]

38 minutes ago, Triassic said:

I had a similar problem with a property I sold a few years ago.

 

I had to get a long term neighbour to swear a Statutory Declaration to the effect that the land was mine and had been my garden for as long as he could remember, in my case 50 years. The solicitor dealing with it got the land correctly registered and I had to purchase an indemnity to the effect that the purchaser would be covered for legal expenses should anyone disputed me registering the land.

 

22 minutes ago, Roundtuit said:

It might be a bit of a pain in the arse to sort out, but I can't see it being a big cost.  I'd speak to the Land Registry first.  If they cant sort it internally,  engage a solicitor (not a conveyancer for anything other than bog-standard..) to register the land as yours using the evidence you've provided here.  A few weeks and a couple of hundred quid later and this will be just a bad dream... ??

Thank You.  

This is kind of what I believed to be the case.  I do appreciate that it might not be and that others have had much more difficult time but I really do think this is pretty clear cut.  I have been coming here myself (before I lived here) since 1955 (ok I don't remember that as I was a baby but memories since 1960) 

 

I know there will be a cost - thousands though are just not on.  The land is only worth about £10k - The whole property around £200k so there isn't cash to throw around

[Jenni]

I agree with Roundtuit. 

 

I work for Ordnance Survey and spend about half my working life measuring exactly this kind of thing. 

 

I'll qualify my response by saying that I don't fully know the Land Registry side of the process. 

 

Many applications for adverse possession do not have a solicitor or other professional involved. Just the applicant in conversation with the Land Registry. 

 

LR base registrations on OS mapping, if the map is incorrect, as it looks like yours could be, then LR will often send an OS surveyor (like me), to update the map and write short report on the age of the features and occupation of the land. Paying an independent surveyor is unlikely to helpful, just unnecessary expense. 

 

Assuming any other interested parties don't object, (from what you're saying they shouldn't), then I believe its 'just' a case of the updated map being used by LR to correct/update the title. (I say 'just' as I believe, from what people tell me when I'm there, that LR aren't the fastest acting organisation). 

 

Where a dispute occurs, it can get very fraught, as I suspect it did for Big Jimbo. And that is a horrible and situation to be in. By the time I arrive on site I've sometimes had grown men crying at their predicament of spiralling costs, months/years of stress and often lost house sales. 

[Jeremy Harris]

We had exactly this, with an inaccurate Land Registry Title Plan, when we bought our plot.  The fence on the ground was in the right place, but for whatever reason the Land Registry had drawn their red line several metres away from where the fence line ran.  Everyone involved agreed that the error was with the Land Registry red line, and it was just a matter of getting the fence line surveyed (cost me £450, inc VAT, but I got the surveyor to do a topo survey whilst he was on site, as well) and then getting the Land Registry to amend the two Title Plans involved (the one for our plot and the one for our neighbour).

 

The cost of getting the plans amended was modest, and the only legal costs were for changing mortgage-related details, I believe.  The Land Registry aren't very fast when handling stuff like this, though, and that may be a nuisance.

[Ferdinand]

Morning @Hecateh. My comment.

 

I think there are strands to this.

 

1 - Your buyer says he has walked away, because he believes he has been deceived. 

 

He will very likely only be convinced that it is a mistake by a communication from the LR (or on their headed paper), or his Solicitor. Your solicitor or you will probably only do that via his solicitor, although a confirmation of an issue by the LR in writing my give him pause direct from you by email. If you want to keep him, ideally you need something in his hand today, or at worst early next week. Your Plan B here is that the selling season starts in full over Easter Weekend, so a chance to start again if you need with an Open House etc, so you have a few days to try and fix it, and then a few days to start again.

 

2 - Facts. Based on your post, to me this looks like a provable error, as you have:

 

a - A LR document showing the questioned bit of front garden as yours when you bought it.

b - An acknowledgement from next door (ie Council) that it is yours, in the (reasonable) request to reopen the right of way.

c - Very much plan B, but in any case, even if a did not exist you have fenced and unquestioned use of it for the period for a claim of adverse possession, and can supply Statements of Truth. That latter may not cover the RoW, but that is minor as a concern.

 

3 - What to do? 

 

As you say approach the LR this morning, first thing. I have always found them helpful.

 

Frame the conversation as correcting an inconsistency that seems to have come up and is threatening your house sale by worrying your buyer. You are quite clear that the bit of land is yours because of 2a and 2b, and because when you look on Google Earth it seems that the boundary features / indicators are consistent.

 

(By that I mean eg where the lines on the ground - fence, RoW etc, line up with on the Gospel Hall opposite, which is on the various LR Deeds and still there. Evangelical persistence can be useful sometimes! They use such indicators when maps are ambiguous; by showing it now you may get a quicker answer from the LR).

 

(Make sure that you have to hand on your PC a screenshot from Google earth which shows the alignment of boundary features in favour of your case, already on an email that you can send whilst talking to them. Mention it fairly early. Add in the docs above, and include a piccie of the Council letter asking you to move the footpath if you have it. Be ready to make it 2 emails in case their system chokes on the attachments.)

 

Ask how do you proceed, and how does it get sorted, and will they be able to confirm by letter / email that there is an issue which will be sorted so that your buyer can be reassured, or have you lost the sale?

 

(I think the LR will likely make it official that it is a problem which is being addressed, but that it will take some time (weeks or months) to do so in the records, and may give you or your conveyancer official confirmation that it is in the queue. That should satisfy potential buyers if they have concerns.)

 

4. Then go from there.

 

IMO your Conveyancer should have spotted this early if they had access to all the docs, and should therefore sort it as a priority, in accordance with whatever the contract says.

 

It may be that the other side just have a teeny-bopping conveyancer who is not confident. I had a hell of a problem when the other side refused to believe that we had the right to access our drive from the road, when we had been using it for 40 years. The issue was that the road had been realigned for the M1 to be built in 196x, and the 4 or 5m of land that were in the wider verge had some difference imposed by the then relevant government department, and it was a sod to find the records.

 

I disagree with others that all conveyancers are not that good - the skillset and knowledge may be narrower than a solicitor, but it can be deeper within a specialist area. eg for many years the boundary site expert on GardenLaw was called Conveyancer.

 

Your hard call may be at what stage to call time on this buyer, since there may already be signs of nitpicking beyond the call of duty wrt electrics.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited April 12, 2019 by Ferdinand

[Ferdinand]

PS Do you want this person for a neighbour .

 

Savour that you are in the overall position of gatekeeper not supplicant, here - albeit with attached costs.

Edited April 12, 2019 by Ferdinand

[billt]

Good advice, as usual.

 

1 hour ago, Ferdinand said:

I disagree with others that all conveyancers are not that good - the skillset and knowledge may be narrower than a solicitor, but it can be deeper within a specialist area. eg for many years the boundary site expert on GardenLaw was called Conveyancer.

 

Your hard call may be at what stage to call time on this buyer, since there may already be signs of nitpicking beyond the call of duty wrt electrics.

 

It looks as if the buyer has pulled out already.

 

I'm sure that there are some good conveyancers out there, no doubt there are some good solicitors as well, but my experience is that they are few and far between.

 

For instance, when my late parents house was sold a few years ago the first potential buyers conveyancer refused to do the first registration! (it was an unregistered property). That's part of their job and trivially easy. In the end I did it myself.

 

We're selling and buying at the moment and getting similar laziness and minor incompetence from the solicitor we are using. (I would rather do it myself but there's an effective closed shop around here and the aggro isn't worth it.)