House extension on un-owned land!

Strapped

Run, don't walk, away.

n33712

princeofpounds wrote: »

No. Adverse possession is a very strong title when finally established.

The reason for that is that all land was seized unlawfully at some point. If we allowed 'back claims' on land then those of us descended from the saxons could sue the normans for the land they nicked! So in law possessory title is firm to stop all that kind of nonsense.

Thanks for clearing that up. The extra land at the side of this house is no good to anyone but the person living in this house! Of course that doesn't mean nobody owns it!

Thrugelmir

Much land remains unregistered simply because it has not changed hands since compulsory land registration was first introduced to the area in question.

n33712

Ok, first of all thanks for all the info and advice so far!

We really want this house so have been asking around. It would seem from neighbours and the local farmer who bought some land near ours that it is true that nobody owns this small piece of land running alongside the house. Also alot people thought that this was land belonging to the house anyway. It really does look like it should belong.

Another option: if anyone comes forward in the next 4 years and tells us to knock it down then the cost of that and a rebuild would be say £30,000 (roughly) I could tell the owner this and say we will take the risk but drop the price by £10,000. Failing that we could always take out a indemnity insurance to cover any future building works etc!

I really doubt anyone will ever come forward to owning this land, i am quite confident of that but you never know and this may add a little bit of protection.....or another £10k

What do you think?

Cheers

mjdh1957

There is actually no such thing as unowned land in Britain.

The theoretical position is that the Crown is the owner of all land and merely allows us to live on it, though in reality a freeholder has rights that are hard to extinguish. But if an owner dies with no heirs then the Crown owns that as well, under the rules of 'bona vacantia'.

hanandhen

hi
i would be a bit carefull over this as we brought our property in 2002, and in 2007 our new neighbours at the back of us informed us that they had brought our back garden, and they had as this piece of land which was originally owned by a farm had never been transfered onto the deeds of our property,
we had to go back throu 4 different owners to prove that the garden belonged to our property, it cost an awfull lot of money to do, but eventually we won and the neighbours had to give us back the garden and we sued our solicitor as he should have known about this, all the documents were buried in a mountain of paper work that came with our deeds that was not checked correctly,
so even thou it didn;t cost us a penny in the end as we got all our money back it took 3 yrs to sort out and a lot of stress

n33712

mjdh1957 wrote: »

There is actually no such thing as unowned land in Britain.

The theoretical position is that the Crown is the owner of all land and merely allows us to live on it, though in reality a freeholder has rights that are hard to extinguish. But if an owner dies with no heirs then the Crown owns that as well, under the rules of 'bona vacantia'.

Yes technically you are correct. The 12 year rule still applies though!

n33712

hanandhen wrote: »

hi
i would be a bit carefull over this as we brought our property in 2002, and in 2007 our new neighbours at the back of us informed us that they had brought our back garden, and they had as this piece of land which was originally owned by a farm had never been transfered onto the deeds of our property,
we had to go back throu 4 different owners to prove that the garden belonged to our property, it cost an awfull lot of money to do, but eventually we won and the neighbours had to give us back the garden and we sued our solicitor as he should have known about this, all the documents were buried in a mountain of paper work that came with our deeds that was not checked correctly,
so even thou it didn;t cost us a penny in the end as we got all our money back it took 3 yrs to sort out and a lot of stress

Wow. What a pain. The current owner has been using this land for 8 years now and can supply proof (solicitor will check this) so hopefully if anyone was going to complain they would have done so by now! Hopefully, it's always a risk!

Yorkie1

http://www.landregistry.gov.uk/professional/guides/practice-guide-5 is a useful guide, assuming the land next door is unregistered (have you checked this with the L Registry?)

Buzby

What about the Council - dis he bother with Planning Permission and Building/Completion Warrant? Adverse possession is a walk n the park compared to getting te Council to agree to regularise an unapproved structure.

Further, if an application was made, check to see if they declared who the land belonged to as this can also work against you.