legal/solicitor - rights of way question

shazzy1773

If anyone could shed some light on this I would be extremely grateful, I really don’t understand any of this. I can't get hold of my solicitor today due to them only dealing with completions today.

To cut a long story short basically the property were buying has a pathway to the front of the property and to the rear is a road where there is access for you to drive down to park your car on your driveway and garage (It's a back to front kind of house)

When our searches came back my solicitor picked up that there is no formal legal rights of way for both the front and back access points and then mentioned about there being a defect in title. Due to this defect in title he is now legally obliged to inform our mortgage company to see if they are still prepared to lend on the property. I've just got an answer back from our mortgage company and they have said:

" It's no problem, providing that the property has the necessary rights over the un-adopted access ways - If you (Solicitor) can confirm this then they will go ahead and realise the money"

Now my question is: if our seller takes out an indemnity insurance policy on this, will that solve this problem?

silvercar

You probably have some rights by the fact that the current owners have established the rights by doing it for so long. Whether an indemnity will be suffice your solicitor will have to decide. Theoretically an indemnity will cover you for the difference in value of the property with the rights of way and without - if it proved necessary to make a claim. If the property was unmortgable its value would be small and without the rights the policy could pay off your mortgage!

I guess your solicitor will have to ask the mortgage people if they will accept rights of way established be precedent (may be the wrong word) along with an indemnity policy. I would guess the answer would be yes or no proerty in the road would be mortagable, but the question will have to be asked.

shazzy1773

I've just spoken to my solicitor's secretary and as it now stands - our seller WILL NOT pay for any indemnity, his reasons being he does not use the front pathway and the fact none of this was every brought up when he bought the house 3 years ago!!

My solicitor thinks it's absolutly daft that just because he doesn't use it, that we wouldn't want to.

The morgage company does want an indemnity in place as well as some kind of declaration?? It's all getting very confusing (as soon as i put down the phone i've forgotten what she's said)

silvercar

I would guess that the mortgage company would want a declaration from the current owner that he has been able to use (or used) the paths for X years thereby establishing a right of way.

If your seller won't pay for an indemnity then you could pay! £200??? maybe cheaper.