Shared walkways and mortgages - potential issues?

Paulgbullard

Hi all,

My partner and I are looking at buying our first house, and whilst viewing, a relative mentioned that the shared walkway that runs along the back of the terraced houses in the street might cause issues when arranging a mortgage. Is this true? I will speak to our mortgage advisor Monday but I was just wondering if anyone else had some advice?

For information, we were looking at a santander mortgage deal - I can't see anything specific on their site (and a wider search doesn't bring anything up).

Thanks!

elsien

What do you mean, shared walkway. Do you mean the access path that runs round the back of the houses - mine has one that used to be for coal deliveries etc and which splits the garden from my back yard.
Quite common round these parts and never been mentioned as a mortgage issue for anyone as far as I'm aware.

stator

I don't see why it would, half the houses in England probably have a shared rear access lane.

Where is the path? At the boundary of the property or does it run acrsoss the rear gardens? If it cuts the garden in half it might reduce the value of the house, but it won't make it unmortgagable.

It's worth looking in to, who owns the land, what sort of rights of way exist? You can tell this sort of thing from the entries at the land registry, will cost £6 per house to get the plan and the title entry.

Paulgbullard

Fantastic, thank you for the replies both. It runs between the house and a spit of garden and then the rest of the garden, and is normally used for gas bottle deliveries.

I've been doing my research and hadn't seen anything either, thank you for validating though. Will definitely look at the land registry and see what we can find out!

elsien

No idea who owns ours, but the water for the houses runs off the mains and round that way. When the pipes needed replacing due to leaks, Severn Trent wanted to charge all the houses nearly a grand each to get the work done. In the end they went ahead and did the work free of charge, but you might want to check if there's anything like that that might affect you.

davidmcn

All perfectly normal, the lender won't care. Your relative is talking nonsense. Probably better to speak to your solicitor than your mortgage advisor if you need further advice.

Land_Registry

Easements (rights) can come into play for a purchase although in my experience lender's may not be too unduly worried re a terraced house and a shared right of way. Your solicitor will know straightaway and I'm sure Santander should be able to advise via one of their mortgage advisers.

Your relative may be referring to some issues lenders can have with flying freeholds nowadays so you have part of a property over the top of a shared access for example?