Property Misdescription Advice

swiftdaniel

[FONT=&quot]Hi All,

I was hoping if someone had any experience or advice of our current situation.

We are in the process of purchasing our first house. The offer was accepted around two months ago and we ran into a issue once our solicitor received the deeds.

Basically the property is a semi detached and was advertised with a garage and drive way directly to the side of the property. Upon inspection of the deeds our solicitor told us that the boundaries do not include the garage and drive way. So she has written to them to ask them for proof that the land is part of the property.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]We have been waiting 2 months now without much progress. All we keep hearing is that they are sorting it out.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]My personal feeling is that the garage and driveway where built without permission a few years ago. The reason I think this is that we heard this had happened through the neighbor of the property. I don’t know if the land was purchased at a later date, but I get the feeling that the solicitors are struggling to sort this out.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]My question is if this turns out to be the situation and the property is now without the garage and driveway and we decide that this is not what we want. Can we do anything legally to say that we were offered the property with the garage and driveway and now this turns out to be incorrect? We will have paid our solicitor regardless. Can we try to claim this money back from the estate agent as the property has been advertised incorrectly?[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]To make things worse we only have 5 weeks of our mortgage offer left.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]We would probably go down the route of still purchasing the house at a reduced price first as we still like the property.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Any advice would be much appreciated.[/FONT]


Kind Regards

Dan
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gazareth

"Can we do anything legally to say that we were offered the property with the garage and driveway and now this turns out to be incorrect?"

No

"We will have paid our solicitor regardless. Can we try to claim this money back from the estate agent as the property has been advertised incorrectly?"

No

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What you can do is go back to the EA and reduce your offer given the uncertainty over the driveway/garage.

googler

The relevant legislation is the Properties Misdescriptions Act 1991 (which, co-incidentally, the Govt is intending to repeal), but you'll find that it only makes provision for fining the agent, not for making recompense to you.

The act includes a defence of 'due diligence' whereby the EA can claim to have made reasonable enquiries as to the situation, etc that they're not liable. What constitutes 'reasonable' would be determined by each individual situation, as far as I can gather

jbainbridge

Speak to the estate agent and ask them to contact the vendor ... tell them you have wasted too much time and are thinking of pulling out.

Not sure how you would find out who owns the land. Is there a property next door? Perhaps contact the Land Registry yourself?

Jimbo1976

I think if you read the PMA then the estate agent does have some degree of liability, though they may argue they were given incorrect info by the vendor.

You are unlikely to get your money back from the estate agent but as Gazareth suggests if you still wish to go ahead then reduce your offer accordingly

Fire_Fox

Welcome! Do you have a no sale-no fee arrangement with your solicitor? How often are you phoning the solicitor and the estate agent to chase this up? Are you reminding everyone each time that you have five weeks left of your mortgage offer and will be reconsidering your offer at that time?