About to exchange, half of garden owned by council

money_saving_diva

I have been watching this thread and I am so glad it is working out for you.

It worries me how many things get found out the day before you exchange. When we sold our last house stuff came up that hadn't been dealt with on the day we thought we were going to exchange. It turns out that the case had been left with a case handler the whole way through and the convencying soliciter didn't look at the file until the day of exchange. She then found all the problems/things that the case handler hadn't done. The case handler was like an office junior.

We then rented while we found a house. When we found a house we found out the vendor was using our old solicter (the same ones we had the problems with) so as soon as the first obvious mistake happened with vendors solicter we warned our new solicter of our previous experience of the firm. he was glad we did because they were usless again and he had to chase them constantly.......even then on the planned day of exchange they said they hadn't seen ID from the vendor! (something we were always asked for in our first letter in the first week) We ended up exchanging and completing on the same day because we had to wait for them to sort themselves out!!

puddy

i hope this works out

i was interested in this thread for another reason though, because its often mentioned on here, to look at the land registry documents, to see boundaries etc etc

however, after buying our house, we saw all the land registry maps, and the plot is drawn so small, you cant make out anything of it, and it certainly doesnt state which side our fence is on, i had to try and make this out from previous documents which mention it for previous buyers, no way could you make this out from the diagram

Fatboy40

jenner wrote: »

i hope this works out

i was interested in this thread for another reason though, because its often mentioned on here, to look at the land registry documents, to see boundaries etc etc

however, after buying our house, we saw all the land registry maps, and the plot is drawn so small, you cant make out anything of it, and it certainly doesnt state which side our fence is on, i had to try and make this out from previous documents which mention it for previous buyers, no way could you make this out from the diagram

That's pretty much the issue our solicitor had as well, the title (?) document from the Land Registry was at such a small scale there was no way of instantly being aware that the rear garden was not as seen when the property was viewed by us.

Also the plot owned by the council was previously the site of a secondary school, and has since been re-developed. There should be some sort of enforced rule that when a large area of land has been re-developed the title plans of all surrounding land must be updated to reflect any changes, ours would have then shown an odd block of land at the rear of the property.

At least this has now allmost been resolved, but with the unfortunate effect of now having the council involved so that our potential completion date of the 12th March 2010 has gone out of the window

dander

That sounds like an excellent result. I'm really glad the vendors didn't get away with conning you over this one. Another plus side I would say is if they have agreed that quickly to just stump up the cash and buy the land then they must be terrified of losing you as buyers - which bodes well for them getting a move on and sorting it as soon as possible.

Homersimpson

Deleted_User wrote: »

Well that sounds like a great outcome all round! I hope that your stress levels return to normal soon!

It amazes me - as someone who very nearly became a solicitor - how a professional of quite some standing can go through such a rigourous education and training process and then still be incompetent. When you hear some of the horror stories on here about solicitors not noticing X and Y or being fraudulent generally you do start to question how they ever became solicitors, given how tough the process is to become one.

I don't think its just Solicitors, I think any proffessional in any industry is the same, there are good ones and bad ones. I work in construction and so come across a lot of Architects, Quantity Surveyors, Structural Engineers, Project Managers etc and can honestly say that although they seem to know what they are talking about and can be quite convincing to the client, when you have worked with good professionals you can easily pickup the bad ones.

I once worked on a major project with another electrical engineer (senior to me) who couldnt even get fuse or cable sizes correct (basic stuff!).

I always remember the old saying when dealing with professionals "In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king!":D