Misrepresentation of Driveway

silvercar

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Eh? Id say it leaves an empty space that someone else can park in !

If others are likely to respect that your drive is for your own use, it makes sense to park elsewhere to reinforce that you have another space. Bad enough having the front room view blocked by your own car, worse if it is someone else's.

sheramber

If somebody has 2 cars then only one can be parked outside their house, so the other will need to be parked outside somebody else's house.

phoebe1989seb

mrginge wrote: »

Personally I would rather cut off an ear than have to deal with shared parking.

Same here. In the past we've bought a few properties with no designated parking. First couple of times we had no car, so we sucked it up as the price reflected that. Next house we did have a car (and a toddler with all that entails!) but the Victorian detached house had no drive or means to create ORP, so we ended up renting a garage across the street. Until then parking was a complete pain as DH's job meant he arrived home late, after everyone else had bagged the nearest spaces and consequently he often had to park in the next road

Last three houses we've had our own drive/garaging which is fab by comparison, although our last house in a village had a huge layby outside and a neighbour with three vans used to park them there 24/7......grrrr! He was a lovely bloke who did some great building work for us but I never stopped resenting the number of vans he had but never drove, instead leaving them to rot whilst obscuring our lovely views from three ground floor windows.

TBH, OP I would seriously consider withdrawing my offer if I were you. If the vendors/their EA have been less than honest about this it would make me question what else they're not telling you/have lied about. It would certainly mar my enjoyment of my lovely home.

Small_Yeti

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your thoughts. I was very curious to see whether this would be an issue for other people or not and I can see it is! So probably OK for us to feel miffed then.

I don't think it would put us off the sale but I probably would have negotiated harder had this situation been clear. The fact the parking spots were meant to be ours did help in us selecting our price and indeed selecting the house itself!

I know that some of you say that you would walk away but I think we have to be realistic in that our selection of houses is limited in the area we want to live in and for the budget we have and we will always have to compromise on something. It is more the fact that the car parking was used as this big incentive not to go buy one of the other houses further down the street and it turns out that although we have the right to park two cars instead of one it is still dependent on there being a spot there in the first place! I mean let's not kid ourselves on, whether or not it is in someone's deeds that they only have one spot, if they have two cars then they will try and park two cars if the spots are not allocated and they think there is a free spot.

In terms of pricing, yes it did impact to a degree on our offer. There are a couple of houses available at the moment on that street. The others we know we could negotiate down to under the asking price but still probably a couple of thousand over the price we have paid. Those houses have brand new kitchens in and are all freshly done out whereas ours does need some unavoidable work doing and we'll have to spend more than the difference in price to get that work done as well as the inconvenience. The parking basically decided the matter over which one to go for if we went for one of those. We also saw other houses with their own parking that were in the running.

I'll be interested to see what the Solicitors come back with. It is not impossible that there is a later bit of paperwork that hasn't yet been provided that confirms that the two spots are allocated to our house. The Vendors seem really nice people which is why I felt so duped when I found this out. From the paperwork provided thus far however it is pretty clear that what we were told was not true and to be honest it took me all of three seconds to read the documents and understand it (it is very clear) so either we are missing something or they knew. I'm hoping we are missing something.

That being said I wouldn't pull a last minute price reduction on them because that is a horrible trick and I wouldn't feel good doing it, even if it was entirely justified because of this issue.

moneyistooshorttomention

1. Does the price you agreed to pay reflect the situation you thought you had OR the situation it actually is? If you weren't thinking "We got a bargain/struck lucky" then maybe you agreed too high a price for the actual situation (ie of no parking) and need to have a re-think as to what to offer (if you still want the house).

2. What does the Title Plan of your house indicate? Is the red line just around the house or does it go round what you thought was your drive as well?

My suspicion is that vendor possibly told you the truth that no-one else ever parked there BUT it was down to him acting intimidating and frightening them out of parking there and they didn't dare do so - even though they knew they were allowed to:cool:. Of course - we can't see whether he's big & burly/hard-faced/been making out "locals come first" and he's a "local" from here.

Small_Yeti

No, he's a very sweet person and I think he gets on with everyone on the street. I definitely couldn't see him being intimidating to anyone. It is entirely possible he is being honest and they did gets the spots allocated but he hasn't included the paperwork. The red line comes out just beyond the house and definitely doesn't include the parking area. That is marked in a different colour and it is stated we are allowed to park two cars in this area.

I think we paid a fair price for the house given what we knew about it when we offered. If the parking situation had been known I would have fought a bit harder for a couple of thousand off but it is not so upsetting that I feel like I wouldn't want the house. I could probably state we should get some money off but I wouldn't personally feel right doing it and I'd rather be able to be OK with my actions than have a couple of thousand in the bank.

I do love the house and the area and I think it's very easy to say that you won't compromise on anything but as first time buyers it makes things a lot easier to acknowledge that you may not get the perfect house, garden and drive but actually, given how much some people struggle to get a house at all, that you are actually going to be very lucky just to have the opportunity to live in a house you really like in a good area.

It was more the feeling that they must have known but that they lied that bothered me. Unless we are missing something. I don't want to blacken his name until he confirms that we have everything and the parking isn't actually allocated!

Doozergirl

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

My suspicion is that vendor possibly told you the truth that no-one else ever parked there BUT it was down to him acting intimidating and frightening them out of parking there and they didn't dare do so

You are not your thoughts. Just because they happen, it doesn't make them true.

There is no reason for even you to believe what you wrote there.

AnotherJoe

Small_Yeti wrote: »

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your thoughts. I was very curious to see whether this would be an issue for other people or not and I can see it is! So probably OK for us to feel miffed then.

I don't think it would put us off the sale but I probably would have negotiated harder had this situation been clear. The fact the parking spots were meant to be ours did help in us selecting our price and indeed selecting the house itself!

I know that some of you say that you would walk away but I think we have to be realistic in that our selection of houses is limited in the area we want to live in and for the budget we have and we will always have to compromise on something. It is more the fact that the car parking was used as this big incentive not to go buy one of the other houses further down the street and it turns out that although we have the right to park two cars instead of one it is still dependent on there being a spot there in the first place! I mean let's not kid ourselves on, whether or not it is in someone's deeds that they only have one spot, if they have two cars then they will try and park two cars if the spots are not allocated and they think there is a free spot.

In terms of pricing, yes it did impact to a degree on our offer. There are a couple of houses available at the moment on that street. The others we know we could negotiate down to under the asking price but still probably a couple of thousand over the price we have paid. Those houses have brand new kitchens in and are all freshly done out whereas ours does need some unavoidable work doing and we'll have to spend more than the difference in price to get that work done as well as the inconvenience. The parking basically decided the matter over which one to go for if we went for one of those. We also saw other houses with their own parking that were in the running.

I think in practice you do not have the right to park two cars, or indeed even one. If you dont have an allocated space, you cannot enforce it.

Since you are admittedly paying more for that non-existent right, if I were you I would want a reduction.

silvercar wrote: »

If others are likely to respect that your drive is for your own use, it makes sense to park elsewhere to reinforce that you have another space. Bad enough having the front room view blocked by your own car, worse if it is someone else's.

And if they arent? Which is all that matters. Plus, you appear to be saying the OP will now always be parking away from their house in some sort of bizarre belief others will say "oh look there's a free space, so I shouldn't park there" ????

Small_Yeti

The spots are allocated in that everyone has one allocated spot (or in our case two) but the allocation boils down to "somewhere over there". So yes, if someone was parking two cars when they have one allocated spot we could bump them out. In reality though...

Cakeguts

What I would like to suggest is that you go round an look at this house at a time when there is likely to be the maximum number of cars parked there. So late at night might be a good idea? You may find that most of the people who only have one allocated space actually have two cars so there may not be enough parking for everyone to park nearby.

We have a house where there are two allocated parking spaces for each house and one neighbour has 3 cars. This has caused a problem because the neighbour tends to park in a place which blocks the access to some of the parking spaces. These spaces are included in the deeds to the houses so not like the parking for the house the OP is looking at.