House with no right of access

Ferferksake

I'm looking at a house that has no right of access. You need to cross over a neighbour's drive to get to it. Normally it'd be a case of "don't touch with a barge pole", but I'm good friends with the neighbour and access will not be a problem, they're happy to enter a legal agreement with us too.

Two questions really, 1) How much should I knock off the asking price of £120k? The house has been empty for a year and I know the current sale is about to fall through because the prospective purchaser was so rude to my friends that they told them where to get off and refused to grant them access. The estate agent has to be worried now surely, because officially there's no access?

2) Is my solicitor/mortgage provider going to refuse to go ahead unless access is legally agreed before the purchase, or can we go ahead with some sort of letter of agreement?

Naturally, the reason we want to get the access agreed after rather than before the sale is to suppress the price.

CLAPTON

do you literally mean there is no right of access i.e. one can't reach the house without permission from the neighbour even on foot?

The_Palmist

How did the previous owners live there before without right of access ?
Your friends could change their minds or move and someone else might move in. I would stay away.

tyllwyd

Wait a minute - so the house is owned by someone else, but the only access is over your friend's land. A sale had been agreed, but your friend is going to scupper that by refusing access. Once that has fallen through, you want to jump in and offer to buy at a knock-down price, knowing that behind the scenes you've agreed with your friend that they will give you access once the sale is through. With no backhanders involved, obviously.

G_M

Provided your friends are willing to grant a right of access not just to you, but to the property and whoever owns it, then I see no problem. Your solicitor can advise on a Conveyance being drawn up.

You would then have no difficulty selling in the future as you would sell with the ROA in place.

theartfullodger

Call me cynical but I think I know what your "friend" is thinking & planning....

pauletruth

I hope your in scotland. in which case the owner of the house can sue for a right of access. it happened up here a couple of years ago. i hope the law is the same down there. its so wrong and i really hope you relize that it is.

Ferferksake

Thanks for all the comments. I'll try to answer them.

A bit more background first off will answer many points, so here goes!

It goes back a bit, but the two houses were originally built and owned by two sisters and house #1 owns the driveway. Nothing was ever formally or legally drafted granting ROW over the drive. House #2 was sold about 20 years ago when one sister died and my friends moved into house #1 about ten years ago and always accepted that their neighbours would cross their drive. The elderly couple in house #2 died within a couple of months of each other and had no children so some distant relative at the other end of the country inherited it and put it up for sale and it's been on the market about a year. It's only now through a buyer's search that the question of access has raised its head with solicitors (quite rightly) demanding it be resolved.

My friends are really not some horrible monsters who are refusing access, nor is this some underhand deal involving a swift backhander. The people who were supposed to be buying the house asked my friends about the ROW and they said that they had no problem allowing them access. The buyer's solicitor insisted it be drawn up legally which again, my friends agreed to, providing the buyer covered the legal costs. My friends were even advised that they should sell the access rather than sign it over for free but they were not interested in making a couple of quid out of the deal. It all went sour when my friend made one simple request. As house #2 is in an elevated position above house #1, he asked that the buyers agree to keep the hedges to a reasonable height (say 6') so that they were not looking directly into his house. That seemed reasonable enough to me, but the buyer, rather than discuss the request, blew up in my friend's face and yelled at him "You don't tell me what I can and can't do with my property", had a general rant at him and stormed off. At this point my friends decided they didn't want neighbours like that thank you very much, so they withdrew their permission for access. I think I'd have done the same in their position, after all who wants a volatile neighbour from hell next door? :eek:

For my part, I've been renting a beautiful house in the same village for the past 12 years, that I never wanted to leave, but unfortunately the landlord now wants to sell and I can't afford it. I started looking round for somewhere to buy, but didn't even consider the house next to my friend because I knew that a sale was going through. It was only AFTER my friends had fallen out with the buyers that I knew that the house would be back on the market. The estate agent is now going to know that access is a problem, so I see no reason why I shouldn't take advantage of this to get a keen price. My friends are quite happy to grant access and have the documents drawn up legally, they're not about to change their mind and not looking for a payoff, they're just delighted that they'll have neighbours they like (don't be so cynical artfullodger ).

I assume that I won't be able to negotiate the price down if the estate agent knows that the ROW has been agreed before the sale so I'd intended doing nothing about it until after completion. (Tyllwyd - don't make it sound so terrible, surely it's not much different to offering a few hundred quid less for a car without an MOT, even though you're a mechanic and know it's in perfect nick? After all, this is a "Money Saving" forum, not a "how do I pay top price for something" forum)

Back to my original questions then;
1) How much should I aim to get the price down by?
2) Are my solicitor and mortgage provider likely to agree to complete before the ROW is settled officially?

TonyMMM

1) Without access the house is practically unsellable, so the starting value is £0 .... your friends hold all the cards here , they could refuse to grant access to anyone except you - which means any offer you make would have to be considered - how much do you want to squeeze the seller ??

2) Can't see any mortgage provider allowing this to go ahead without a legal access rights agreement - their loan would be secured against a worthless asset.

Ferferksake

Thanks Tony. I guess the "how much" is pretty open then. The only contender might be the farmer who owns the land behind who could make a new access through to it, but he's notoriously tight so I'm sure I'd outbid him anyway.

The second point was the one giving me most concern, for the very reason you mention. If the right was granted before completion, the vendor and estate agent would know so I could wave bye-bye to my "discount". Do you know of a letter of agreement (or similar) that could be drawn up from my friends to my solicitor in order to satisfy the bank, without alerting the vendors or estate agent?

dippy

You can make the contract to acquire the Right of Access to be dependent on the sale going through. That's what sollicitors are for, they will have the money from the bank conditional on the sale going through, the Right of Access conditional on the sale going through too, and on the day of completion, everything flies off and fall in their proper place.

If the sale falls through, everything is returned back to their previous state, e.g. if the mortgage was drawn down a few days before but subequently completion didn't go ahead, neither the sollicitor nor you will get to keep the money.