About to exchange, half of garden owned by council

Richard_Webster

Make the point quite firmly to seller that he should have told you about this at the beginning - you thought you were getting a house with the full length garden and now you are not - you either want seller to buy land and pass it on to you as part of price or reduce price by the amount you would have to pay for it plus costs. You may not get away with all of this in negotiation, but it is reasonable starting position for any bargaining.

ginvzt

I agree, I wouldn't proceed with the purchase of the house at the same price and I would definitely not exchange today! And I agree that the valuation would not be valid if it was not pointed out to the surveyoer that it is only half the garden. If the hosue was advertised with the garden as it is (full length), isn't it a misrepresentation? The seller is at fault and he has to provide 'goods' as advertised, doesn't he? Thatn mean the whole of the garden, not half and then you are welcome to rent the other half!

poppysarah

I would ask the current sellers to buy the land - and have it included in the price (If thats what the valuer thought the land was)


£25 a month is insane!

ginvzt

poppysarah wrote: »

£25 a month is insane!

I guess, it depends on the size of the plot I haven't noticed OP mentioning the size of it.

Fatboy40

Well, I've had a quick e-mail from my solicitor this morning and this is part of it...

I believe that the agreement between the Vendors and the Council is verbal only and it is unlikely that they will take payments made so far as instalments of the purchase price but who knows they may agree to this. I cannot see any reason why the Council would wish to hang on to this piece of land and it should be simply to acquire the same.

... I'm highly dubious of Hampshire County Council entering into a verbal agreement, I mean come on this is local government we're dealing with here who love pen pushing and paper work. Also if it's a verbal agreement how are the vendors paying the council as this £25 can't just be going to their accounts department and vanishing into some virtual pot of cash ?.

I'm a bad judge of size but the plot is maybe the size of two Transit vans lying on their sides ?.

Also as another poster has stated, all of this may well be misrepresentation on the part of the vendor / EA ?. I think that this needs to be formaly sorted out before our purchase goes any further, our solicitor just wants us to sign the contract today though so that she can have it on file to be submitted at a later date, how do you all feel about this ?.

Fatboy40

ginvzt wrote: »

If the hosue was advertised with the garden as it is (full length), isn't it a misrepresentation?

Now this I find very interesting, and if you follow the letter of the law then yes it was misrepresentation !.

silvercar

I would be inclined to phone the council and find out what's going on. What happens if you don't pay the £25 a month and use the garden? Can they serve notice on you, enter your garden to fence off their land? Do you automatically have the right to continue renting at £25 a month or can the council use the change of ownership of the house to force a "buy it or we'll sell it to someone else" issue. Councils are public bodies and have a duty to the tax payers, what happens if they decide to not rent it to you and put it up for sale? Sealed bids with all the gardens adjacent to it offered a notification of sale?

You need to know what you are dealing with.

gauly

We had a similar problem when we bought recently - it turned out part of our garden was not included. This piece of land was very small and clearly would have made no difference to the price of the house, however, the major problem was the need to inform the mortgage company. Our solicitor said it would be mortgage fraud to not inform them (and you should too) because they had done the survey based on that land being part of the property. The mortgage company may then choose to do another survey - our soliciter said the whole palaver could take up to a month to sort out.

In the end it was much quicker for the previous owners to get title to the missing land, which they did at their cost. If I were you I would first ask the current owners to buy the missing land - this will probably be the quickest and cheapest option for you.

Fatboy40

To make things easier I may as well include the link to the property on Right Move...

http:// tiny url .com /yzffjzn

(had to break that up as this forum threw a wobbly, remove the spaces)

... which if you look at the PDF brochure it states...

Rear Garden: Fully enclosed by panel fencing and mainly laid to lawn. Patio area adjacent to house, small raised rockery, garden shed, outside tap and gated side access to front.

... so no mention that the rear garden that's shown in the picture is not for sale as shown, in that a portion of it (the area at the rear with the panel fencing) is not in the posetion of the vendor at all.

ILW

If you do not get this tied down before exchange you could end up in trouble. The council probably have a duty to sell the land and achieve maximum revenue. I know of one small company that buys up these small packages of land, and then makes a fortune by holding adjoining landowners to ransom with all sorts of nuisance and petty legal issues.
I would not exchange until you have bought or have a legal contract to carry on renting the land for as long as you require.