Flying freehold - is it realistic to ask a neighbour to change the title deeds?

nimbo

He's painting over a passage way. Probably thinking he's doing the decent thing as he uses it. He can't stop the right of way to the garden of the house you're thinking of buying and it would look silly if he only painted halfway over the passage way - would be my thinking on that.
You seem to be catastrophising. Exactly what is he 'claiming' the rooms inside are 'yours'. He's unlikely to be moving a wall inside by stealth.
Ask the vendors directly if there ever been any issues.
But also serioulsy also consider buying a different house. You've said you'll be living next door to students. Possibly different ones each year. Possibly noisy ones each year. With a landlord who is trying to 'claim' the tunnel to the back garden.

graboluk

nimbo, the vendor said there have never been any issues, but this is not particularly important - until mid 2000s all was managed by the council, so essentially there was much less scope for neighbourly arguments. In particular noone has reroofed this house (certainly since mid 2000s, maybe since mid 1920s).

Say my wife fancies green slates when we reroof - I want to be sure before I buy that I have a right to put green slates over my flying freehold.

Same with, say, pink external walls on the flying frehold.

(also sorry for a misunderstanding - what I wanted to imply is that the neighbour painted only over "his" part of the passageway - i.e. half of the wall over the pasasageway has his colour, and part has the old colour. I totally admit he might have acted totally reasonably :-) But nevertheless these are the walls which "enclose" my flying freehold, so it suggests that he considers the external walls over his freehold land as "his" - otherwise he could have just left it as it was.)

Davesnave

graboluk wrote: »

Say my wife fancies green slates when we reroof - I want to be sure before I buy that I have a right to put green slates over my flying freehold.

'Fraid you can't be totally sure just now.

A material change when re-roofing needs planning permission these days. You might be deemed to be altering the street scene unacceptably.

graboluk

It was just an example, replace "green slates" with anythign which happens to be completely acceptable to the local authority, but which my nieghbour doesn't like.

Davesnave

Yes I understand, but I think you are making rather too much of this neighbour's rights, if they have any that might affect you.

Here, you're not paying for a detached house, and even if you went up a level to a traditional semi, you'd not be free from neighbour influence.

I lived for over 20 years in a semi. While in theory, my neighbour and I could do what we liked with our respective halves, in practice we chose to keep things similar. This was probably because we were sensible enough to realise that a single structure with clashing halves doesn't look great.

Unfortunately, unless one buys a detached house, there is no guarantee that the property's appearance won't be compromised to some extent by the person next door's personal choices.