Buying a property where right of access is involved

alibaba72

Hi

I am buying a house that is in a row of four houses. I am the second house in. The house next to me has access across my land and the end house to put bins out, etc. The house I am buying apparently has access across the back of the end house. My title deeds do not mention any of these access rights. The vendor has however signed something concerning next door having access across the back but there is nothing about having access across the end house. This all seems very complicated and lots of hassle. Have they all just reached an agreement about this access??? If the end house sold I may not get any access

G_M

Have they all just reached an agreement about this access???

How could we possibly know?

You have not told us where you are getting your information about this access.

From infomal chats with the seller? or neighbours?
From documentation? What documentation?
From your solicitor? where did HE get the information from?

The vendor has however signed something

Again: far too vague to comment.

Signed what? Between who? Registered where/how? Saying exactly what?

Conveyancers are paid to sort out this sort of thing during the conveyancing process so

a) why not ask your conveyancer or
b) if you want a bunch of unqualified strangers to do it for you, at least give them access to the conveyancing paperwork......

Land_Registry

Access issues such as this do require quite a bit of investigation if the registered titles do not refer - as G_M mentions we need far more detail to be able to offer any concrete advice and if, as your post suggests, there is some doubt over who has what access then this is for your conveyancer to query and resolve for you.

In a 'perfect' scenario the registered titles would refer to the rights each enjoys over the other(s) and vice versa as appropriate

So if you want to do some digging yourself start by checking the registered title(s) and then check the thing signed by the seller.
I would though be going back to my conveyancer on this as you need to understand what is in place currently and as you already appreciate understand how that could change in the future

moneyistooshorttomention

Whatever the situation is, you need to establish two things:

a. What is the case in law (ie something is down somewhere clearly in writing specifying that "x has access over y").

b. What the neighbours (both sides) are telling you is the case.

Then bear in mind that the actual facts (ie what is legally the case) might be different from what the neighbours tell you one way or another.

It is entirely possible that the neighbours are trying to tell you that the level of access rights your property has are more/or less than is actually the case because it suits them personally to do so.

It is entirely possible that the previous owner of your house may have let neighbours use access they don't have the legal right to and has decided to "roll over and play possum" by letting you think those neighbours have rights they don't have in order to avoid that infamous "neighbour dispute". Yep...there are house vendors that pull that one and it may even be that your vendor would go so far to avoid "neighbour dispute" that they would sign a bit of paper saying things are different to how they actually really are iyswim (eg because they have been "walked over" by said neighbours).

princeofpounds

Read the deeds of all four houses. The access rights do not necessarily need to be mentioned on all of them. There may be other ways of establishing the right of way, but the deeds are the most normal way to have it all recorded. Your lawyer should be checking this and interpreting it for you, but you need to make them aware of the situation.


This set of arrangements is actually quite common in terraces. So my expectation would be that the rights of way are properly set out somewhere (but there is no guarantee - some other scenarios have already been outlined). But I've seen more than one dispute arise as a result of it, when people don't understand their rights/obligations, so you should probably talk to the neighbours about their expectations.