Buying small plot of land from neighbours, advice needed.

F_T_Buyer

I assume the road is to the left of the pic? I assume you can get two cars on your drive?

For price, I would say to them you will pay all costs incurred and offer 1.5k to start with - let them think on it as that money would be straight into their pocket, and maybe up it to 2.5k max. It's probably worth more as you'll be getting a bigger garden, but it limits a future buyer of their house having parking at the rear.

GDB2222

I would definitely look at both sets of plans before doing anything else, as you may already own it!

As for price, you need to try to work out roughly how much your house would increase in value with that extra bit of ground. That's obviously an upper limit on what you would want to spend.

clutton_2

i discovered that some of my neighbours land was on my deeds when i remortgaged a few years back.... best £8 i ever spent - i downloaded theirs and mine....

F_T_Buyer

What happened in that situation Clutton?

clutton_2

it transpired that they had bought the extra bit of land in 1964from the owner of my property at that time. Their lawyer had not registered the sale at LR - so LR did not know about the division of the plot.

So it appeared on both sets of paper land deeds.

My neighbours had been using it for more than the adverse possession period (i think it was 7/10 (?) years at the time)

I thought so much about them as neigbours that i let it go without a fight. It was only enough to park 2 cars on, and i had a garage anyway.

But it proves that LR is not always correct... If a property has not been sold since LR registration became compulsory it is always possible that old paper deeds will reappear.

If there is such a dispute i learned that the only recourse is court action.

calypso_rhapsody

It looks very odd Wooden - if they own that bit, why on earth didn't the neighbours put their shed there and have a bigger garden/yard?

As you've already been advised, I'd do the research quite carefully before approaching them - it is possible that they don't own the plot - or maybe they just don't know they do ...

If buying the piece of land is not possible, you might at least be able to arrange to rent it from them for a low rent as it has no use to them? not a long term solution (if they sell and the new owner wants it) but a lot cheaper!

That said, i would guess from the layout that this bit of land could improve the value of your property (and maybe make it more saleable) by giving you a larger garden/yard (or more parking) so worth pursuing ... no idea how much the value would increase by and to my mind that's the maximum you should be prepared to pay.

Wooden

I know it looks abit odd, i can't figure out why they've fenced it off either ? The 2 rear yards and parking bays weren't level, they kinda raise up from the bottom left in the pic to the top right, i'd say the top right is about 0.5m higher, so when the neighbours exteded their yard they've had to dig down abit to level it off, they have paving stones in their yard now, they only levelled off up to the fence thats next to their shed, so now from the level of their yard to the level of the small square of land theres about a 0.3m step, which limits them even more to be able to do anything with it.
Yes, i have room to park 2 cars, and the road is to the left, not a main road, just the road on the estate.
The houses are about 10 / 11 year old (typical new built housing estate), not sure how long the neighbours have been there or how long the changes were made, i bought the property in June 09.
Just been having a look thru some paper work and found some Land Registry details, theres a plan of the estate with my propperty boudary outline as it is now, but the plan if from 99, theres no mention of any parts of the land changing hands (non that i can see anyway). I'll try and download the deeds / plans tomorow, see what they come up with.

** Also just been having a search on-line and found that there was planning permission granted in August 04 for the construction of a conservatory, so i'd imagine the extention of the yard was done at the same time, and also that the house was sold in April 07, so it looks like it wasn't the current neighbours who done the work, which as a few of you have said, they might not know the piece belongs to them. I'll look into it further.

Thanks alot.

Wooden

Downloaded the Title Plan of the neighbours property today, and it shows that piece of land as theirs.
What would the plan of attack be now, just give them a knock and see what they say ?

lollipop_28

We went through this process a couple of years ago.

If I were you I would knock on the door and ask them if they would be interested in selling. I would then put an offer in writing.

In our case we paid our neighbours £1000 plus fees. There was a fee of £75 to our neighbours mortgage company to release the land, plus several fees for searches. We only used one solicitor for both parties which was £350 inc VAT so all in all it cost us £1493. We drew up the plans ourselves which saved money.

So once your neighbours have agreed to a price the next step would be to instruct a solicitor and get the plans drawn up.

All in all it took us about 2 months.

Hope this helps

GDB2222

Wooden wrote: »

Downloaded the Title Plan of the neighbours property today, and it shows that piece of land as theirs.
What would the plan of attack be now, just give them a knock and see what they say ?

To be on the safe side, download yours too.