Buying a house where neighbour uses the driveway

gwernybwch

Next week I’m due to view a semi-detached house for sale where it seems that thereis some kind of arrangement in place where the neighbour can drive their car up the drive, across the back of the house for sale and it appears that the neighbour has even made an open gap in the garden fence so that they can then park their car in their own garden.

I’m assuming that there is ‘custom and practice’ as the neighbour has even built some kind of garage / shelter in their garden for their car. I’m guessing that I will have to view the deeds to establish if there is some kind of established right of way.

If there is nothing on the deeds and no vehicular right of way on the ‘searches’, what legal rights would the new purchaser have to stop the neighbour using the driveway? Or I am mad in even thinking of buying a house with this arrangement in place?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Tinkaf1

I would not buy a house where I had to continue with that arrangement. If you don't have to, that is a different matter....however, you are then going to be on bad terms with your new neighbour before you even get the keys. If the house is worth it then fair enough, but boy it would really have to be worth it!

globetraveller

This sounds strange- have you the details you can show us?

shegar

I wouldnt touch it, I can smell allsorts of problems with that arrangement ........A definate no no...

twokcc

gwernybwch wrote: »

Next week I’m due to view a semi-detached house for sale where it seems that thereis some kind of arrangement in place where the neighbour can drive their car up the drive, across the back of the house for sale and it appears that the neighbour has even made an open gap in the garden fence so that they can then park their car in their own garden.

I’m assuming that there is ‘custom and practice’ as the neighbour has even built some kind of garage / shelter in their garden for their car. I’m guessing that I will have to view the deeds to establish if there is some kind of established right of way.

If there is nothing on the deeds and no vehicular right of way on the ‘searches’, what legal rights would the new purchaser have to stop the neighbour using the driveway? Or I am mad in even thinking of buying a house with this arrangement in place?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

I have been in a similar situation my immediate reaction would be to walk away from the purchase, you won't believe the problems such an arrangement can cause, even if you get on allright with the existing neighbours you cannot forsee how this could work out if your neighbours decie to move.

However, if the house is the only one for you, you can formalise the arrangement. Firstly tell your solicitor about it. You will have to determine that the drive is shown on your title deeds as being your property. If the drive is yours you can then offer to grant your neighbour a right of way over your drive. Good solicitor will advise on how to do and conditions(such as no parking on ROW). The grant of the ROW would be at a cost to your neighbour(including paying both parties legal fees) this will depend upon his situation i.e garage at back of property, no other offstreet parking. This could amount to about 7-10% of the value of his property if no ROW would be a big loss to the value of his property. So you could benefit to the tune of say £10k on £120k property. Logistics of this would be very difficult as your seller could negogiate the same deel before he sells - so could open a massive bag of forms.
Whatever you do don't proceed with the purchase without a watertight legal agreement.
Good luck whatever you decide to do.

globetraveller

Remember that some day you will want to sell that house.
However, I can imagine that the present owners will have problems selling so perhaps there might be a bargain there??

Bluemeanie_2

I would avoid like the plague.

pararct

Ask the vendor, maybe there is a financial agreement in place. You can either live with that or cancel and live with the potential consequences.
You say this house is semi detached. Is the property to which you refer the other end of your gable end?
If so do they not have their own drive?
If they are slam next door it may well be there is shared access/upkeep, lots of properties in the burbs in London work like this

thegirlintheattic

Would not touch it with a barge pool - so many things could go wrong.

Contessa

I certainly wouldn't buy it. I don't even like it when there are two drives next to each other, unseperated by a wall or fence. To paraphrase an old adage-"Seperate drives make good neighbours".

gwernybwch

Thanks all for your responses.

pararct wrote: »

You say this house is semi detached. Is the property to which you refer the other end of your gable end?

From what I can tell, the two houses are a pair of semi-detached houses (i.e. joined to each other, but not joined to any other houses). It looks like originally both houses had significant area to the side of each house. That area was so big, that the areas have been sold off for new-build houses to be built on. It looks like the house that I am due to view ensured that they kept a driveway toside, whilst the neighbour sold the whole of side area to their house (excluding a walkway). The neighbour then decided that wanted to have vehicular access to the rear of the property, hence this strange arrangement currently in place.

globetraveller wrote: »

Rememberthat some day you will want to sell that house. However, I can imagine that thepresent owners will have problems selling so perhaps there might be a bargainthere??

I think that is what it boils down to; the entrepreneur in me says that there is the potential for a bargain, it just a case of getting a feel for how to deal with such arrangements and whether it is worth the hassle....

twokcc wrote: »

Firstly tell your solicitor about it. You will have to determine that the driveis shown on your title deeds as being your property........

Thanks for the response. I was hoping that there was someone out there that had been through something similar before and could give some signposts as to how to deal with it.

The thing that I would be particularly interested in, is there is nothing in writing between the two neighbour only a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ and ‘customand practice’, what would be the difficulties from a legal perspective of preventing the neighbour from having vehicular access.