House vendor has sold most of the garden??!

dizzydoodah

Looked at a property today, it was my front runner. On viewing the estate agent suddenly blurted out that most of the garden had been sold to a neighbour. It was pretty small anyway and it's all the lawn bar a little strip. What's left is some badly damaged concrete and mud (the 'patio') He pointed to a little post in the soil marking the new boundary (no fence). I was quite taken aback as its not mentioned on any of the online or paper particulars. I can't find anything on the land registry about it so it must be fairly recent. They won't disclose the selling price. The EA was quite rude when I asked about it saying "well you wouldn't know a thing about it if I hadn't pointed it out" well I think I would once the solicitor got to work! So I'm in a quandary. The property is still a good fit, very sad about the garden because I like to garden! But here's the thing... They have it on for £142950 well over the zoopla price 123000-132000 ( not always %100 I know) and they've pocketed from the sale of the garden. I don't really know how much to offer. Any help appreciated

maninthestreet

Drop your price accordingly.

Keep_pedalling

Walk away, it will annoy you all the while you live there.

AdrianC

You like gardening. So why are you thinking of buying a house without much garden?

What the vendor's been paid - if anything - for something that's not part of the sale is completely and utterly irrelevant to your prospective purchase. You are considering buying the land from that peg on, not the bit the other side.

As for the Zoopla estimate - "not 100%" is probably moving the decimal point.

Cakeguts

Find somewhere else. You like to garden and this house has now been spoilt by not having a reasonable sized garden. My suspicion is that the seller won't accept how much they have devalued the house by doing this.

frugalsmurf

I had a friend who sold a lot of her garden and hadn't realised how much she devalued it. She had it up for an inflated price and got no interest so sold half of a massive garden to someone to build on.
Then reduced the price (without specifying the garden!) And got loads of interest...until she mentioned the garden.
....years later she's still there as no one's interested and she won't price it realistically.

I'd guess they've priced it in their minds taking into account the garden.

Personally I think it will bug you if you bought it, especially if you enjoy gardening.

They may well take offers, you don't know till you try.

As for zoopla....ignore that

Davesnave

I retained about 1/4 of my very large garden after the sale of the house, but I sectioned it off with a 1.8m fence well before putting the house on the market.

People don't like to think they're 'missing-out,' even if it's something not particularly useful to them, so this vendor has made a psychological blunder, regardless of how the division's been done.

We can see this in your post, because you want to know how much she's been paid for it. You're probably annoyed too, because the house sounds good, without this issue she's created.

I don't think you'll proceed.

If she's been as daft as that, I'd treat other decisions she's made about the house as suspect too, so I'd look particularly hard at what else had been done during her period of tenure.

moneyistooshorttomention

Don't do it - ie don't buy that house.

I agree that you would be getting thoroughly aggravated every time you couldnt use the rest of your garden (ie because it was no longer yours).

The question is too just what the neighbour wishes to do with "your" garden. Bad enough to see them gardening in your garden. But - they might want it to build an ugly concrete shed or garage or something for themselves on (eyesore time).

Worse still - does the neighbour wish to "garden grab" and build another house on their garden? Maybe their garden isnt big enough for garden grabbing but with your garden thrown into the mix as well it might be - and you might find your garden being used as a development plot.

You might not, on the other hand, as I've known of someone make a grab for a neighbours garden and buy it with that intention in mind - and then not given planning permission.

I agree that the vendor will almost certainly try to charge more for their house than it's worth minus its garden. Even in my current (cheaper) area of the country - I've been surprised to notice that the difference in price between garden and similar no-garden houses appears to be TENS of thousands of £s.

moneyistooshorttomention

Re how much the vendor has been paid for your garden - I guess that information would now be out there in the public domain. If that garden sale has now been registered by the Land Registry - then you could probably find out (assuming it was done 3??? or more months ago).

AnotherJoe

Just to echo other posts, what they sold the garden for is irrelevant. If it was sold for a million pounds does that mean they should give you the house for free?

The house is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it which is likely a lot less if much of the garden is missing. I'm not sure why you are even considering it since you like gardening and you already think it's overpriced even without the missing garden.

Then as said there are potential issues for what may be done with that land. As well as the use of it as a garden, it also gives you space between you and the neighbour, which now is lost, and there's a value to that.

Walk. Away. Now.

dizzydoodah

Davesnave wrote: »

I retained about 1/4 of my very large garden after the sale of the house, but I sectioned it off with a 1.8m fence well before putting the house on the market.

People don't like to think they're 'missing-out,' even if it's something not particularly useful to them, so this vendor has made a psychological blunder, regardless of how the division's been done.

We can see this in your post, because you want to know how much she's been paid for it. You're probably annoyed too, because the house sounds good, without this issue she's created.

I don't think you'll proceed.

If she's been as daft as that, I'd treat other decisions she's made about the house as suspect too, so I'd look particularly hard at what else had been done during her period of tenure.

Yes the EA did say that they're regretting selling (the garden) now a bit