unilateral notices and value

DVardysShadow

bellathe2nd wrote: »

To DVardysShadow
There is no doubt that the bank loaned 650K on all of this property in 2007,they foreclosed in 2008, the unilateral notices went on after this. Thoughts please.

Walk away. Don't do anything until you have walked away.

Once you have walked away emotionally, go and talk to the unilateral notice neighbours. As they have both used the same mechanism to deal with their issues, you can be fairly sure they are working together to some common agenda. You need to understand their issues. In a way, it is a good thing that they are working together - it is a sign of a well bonded community. The question is whether they are going to let you into their community and whether they are going to let you have the property you think you are buying on terms which are acceptable to you.

In these situations, I think that there may be a lot of pent up resentment against the former owners and what you are seeing is actually bargaining positions intended to prevent whatever nuisance the former owners brought to the locality.

I write with some experience here - I am not going to be too specific - but there were some quite crusty responses to our vendor over something we needed to make our purchase work for us. The crustiness was directed at our vendor - but once people realised that they needed to address our concern for us to buy out our vendor and remove their problem, things began to move in our direction to the extent.

We were very quickly assimilated into the local area once it was clear that we were prepared to be local people. Trouble comes when you approach property and relationships with town attitudes.

Get a good solicitor who can implement whatever agreements are required. But walk away emotionally first.

I am assuming that your new neighbours have reasonable concerns. If this is the case, and you can meet those concerns, you will probably find that they will do their best to ensure that you are their neighbour on terms acceptable to everyone.

clutton_2

i discovered that my neighbour had a document which proved that he had bought some land from a previous owner in the 1960's but that this transaction had not been registered at LR by his solicitor at the time(*it was not compulsory at that time)

When i bought my property in 1980's my solicitor did not send me a copy of the title deeds so i was never aware that they land could have been mine...

the LR view was that as this was the first time that the neighbours property had been registered (2007) that there was no fault anywhere - and i could see their point.


It was a smallish pretty worthless bit of ground, used by them for parking, and as my neighbours had been using it for 40 years, and had been marvellous neighbours, i figured that it was rightly theirs.. so i ceded my claim.

clutton_2

""There is no doubt that the bank loaned 650K on all of this property in 2007,they foreclosed in 2008, the unilateral notices went on after this.""

there can only be 2 scenarios in my view

either lawyers got it wrong in 2007

or

the neighbours are trying it on..

if they claim it is theirs and are unwilling to show their evidence - why is that ?

If they are certain it is theirs they would be showing all and sundry WHY they claim it

I agree with the Bank having to sort out clean Title before selling.. it IS their responsibility, particularly as they are the owners.

How long h as this next door neighbour lived there ?

bellathe2nd

the neighbour has lived there 30 years, the bit he has taken sqaures his house off nicely, and probably adds 50K or so to the value, as before he had no back garden hardly, now he has half acre and the front and another half acre at the back. Although I agree its the banks responsibility, if they do not want to get caught up in legal wrangles there is nothing I can do about it. only the owner of the property can get the unilateral notice investigated. So now to the $64000 dollar question, how much shall I gamble that none of them own anything. Worst case scenario is I finish up with a cottage on a good plot, with a one bedroom bungalow attached value around 200K, a big solicitors bill and with neighbours I dont like OR a cottage on a good plot, with a one bedroom bungalow on half acre and a barn and cartlodge on a two acre plot with full plannning permission for residential conversion probable value in todays market £500k, before I even start to develop. We agreed 357K with the bank BEFORE the problems arose, we think we can get away with 250k although the offer on the table as of tonight is 225k plus whatever solicitors fees there may be regardless of who wins Comments from all poker players and gamblers appreciated.

DVardysShadow

Ah, becomes a little clearer. I was under the impression that the repo'd owner may well have upset the neighbours who were just flexing a little muscle. It begins to look like this one neighbour is actually on a land grab and it may well be that he was the straw which broke the camel's back for the repo'd owner.

Before you go much further, you must get to the bottom of this with everything on all affected properties which you can get from the Land Registry. Personally, I would not want to live next door to anyone on a landgrab. Don't play poker on this until you are really sure of everyones' hand or you are happy with what you get left with.

clutton_2

what deeds and plans are the Lender's solicitor producing ? if it is a plan which you do not agree with, then let your solicitor fight it out with the lender's solicitor... it will be SO much more difficult to get a reconfigured title map AFTER completion.

I would go for it if it was me.....

bellathe2nd

It still comes down to IF I had a claim to some land, I would be first in the queue with the evidence, my solicitor has written to their solicitors and they do not wish to produce anything at this stage. The barn grabber just has not responded. These are the same people that put the unilateral notcies on in the first place, so I thought they would be happy to produce documentation to verify their claims to anyone that will listen. The garden grabber I think just jumped on the bandwagon. I have done a search on the barn grabber and he seems very good at having county court judgements against him in our local courts, so not a fine upstanding member of the community then. The last one being for an unpaid debt of £17000. This was always going to be messy, but again we are talking a possible profit of thousands of £s, as you rightly said, the emotianal attachment I had for this property has long gone and greed on my part has taken over....so how much is the gamble worth. Any thoughts

bellathe2nd

The mortgagees (Santander) have produced the deeds for ALL the property. this is what they beleive they loaned the 650K on. The bottom line is really have santander made a mistake or are there a couple of cowboys looking for an angle.

bellathe2nd

My solicitor has gone as far as he can, he was that intrigued he waived his fee for me to continue to see how it panned out, but its got to the stage now where if we want it, we have to buy it with these notices attached and then go to get them removed when we are in a position to say put up or shut up. My solicitors feeling is that the grabbers are trying to pull a fast one but he obviously cannot professionally advise us to gamble our money so the decision has to be ours. Just wondered if anyone else had ever had heard anything like it or knew something in respect to valuations of such properties. My offer is just under half of Zooplas valuation

DVardysShadow

Decent people with a claim on land would be forthcoming about the grounds for their claim to anyone who was going to buy the land they were claiming from someone else. So I am now drawing 2 conclusions

• They have no basis for their claims
• They are not decent people

I can see a business case for taking them on and expecting to win. But in your shoes, I would only do it to sell on - I doubt I would want to live there.

You need a legal budget for this - I think you either need the pretenders to back down very quickly or you need to have the matter tested in court - otherwise the matter remains in limbo and you will have to declare an on going dispute to any future buyers. This is of course the tactic of the pretenders - to win the land by attrition, adverse possession and scaring off buyers. It does not help that the bank are not involving themselves - but on the other hand, that is exactly the basis of your opportunity here.

With money to punt for business - rather than as a place to live, I am warming to the opportunities of this scenario. These characters are doing you a big favour by scaring off any other potential buyers - but be aware, they may be doing this for and on behalf of their own pet buyer.

The bank prefers the security of a low offer now to the risks involved in seeing this through. Being cautious, I would naturally want this sorted out before contract - but I think if you achieve that, then actually, you pull the rug from under your own feet, by increasing the value of the bank's asset, which may in turn lead to you losing the opportunity to buy.

Conveyancing, by its nature is very different from litigation because it is essentially collaborative rather than adversarial. I think your current solicitor cannot provide what you need now, which is a hour with a property litigation lawyer, to understand how this could pan out.

After that, you should perhaps consider exchanging contracts and buying off the neighbours. You could think along the lines of 'without prejudice' negotiation to buy them off at about 5% to 15% of the value of disputed property and then kick the idea into the long grass, taking them to court to remove the notices.

Do make sure that the bank has given you sight of all relevant correspondence and material first.

Sorry if this is a bit disjointed, I am thinking on the hoof here.