Major delays - advice sought!

lincroft1710

"The time has come", the Walrus said "to talk of many things"

Er, no. The time has come to look for another house.

Paul_S_1986

davidmcn wrote: »

To what extent does the title discrepancy matter? Can the neighbours feasibly do something with the strip they own? Has "your" property acquired rights through x years of use without any objection being raised? If so can you get evidence of that by affidavits etc from the sellers? Can the property be accessed by another route? That sort of thing.

Thanks, some good points. Basically, the strip of land runs about three quarters of the way across the driveway. In theory, I suppose, they could build a wall on it for instance and block the access but what sort of person would do that? Looking at the plans, it looks about 12 - 18 inches deep and maybe 6-8ft long.

The property was built in 2001 from memory, would that be long enough to have acquired the rights that you speak of?

I don't believe that there is any other access to the property.

Paul_S_1986

Pixie5740 wrote: »

Even allowing for the vendor's spell in hospital he's dragged his feet for months. Feasibility the tenants could be in there for another 6 months easy.

Agreed. If it goes through at all, I am beginning to think we could be going beyond Christmas.

Slinky

There's nothing to stop you looking for other properties through other agencies whilst keeping this one on the back burner in case it comes good. In your situation I wouldn't even be bothered about viewing with the same agent and disclosing your hand! You don't have to cut your ties with this house until you have an offer accepted elsewhere.

Davesnave

Paul_S_1986 wrote: »

In an ideal world, yes. However, to suit our budget we would now have to either lose the driveway (regrettably highly important for my work and lack of on street parking in this town), lose a lot of space (from an already relatively small property) be forced out of the area or, most likely any combination of those three.

Sadly, most of us have had the experience of not living in an ideal world.
Back in the noughties, when vendors suddenly withdrew their property from sale, deciding not to divorce after all, we faced a similar situation. It was the ideal location and property for our business.

Like you, we found the prospect of losing this gem hard to swallow, but instead of moving on mentally, we measured every subsequent property against what had been denied us. None of them was as good. We dithered.

It was only later that we saw other very good opportunities had been missed. Totally our fault.

Paul_S_1986

lincroft1710 wrote: »

The time has come to look for another house.

An increasingly popular suggestion. We would be so disappointed to lose this place as well as the time, money and stress that would have been wasted. That coupled (even trebled) with being forced to significantly step down from an already modest opportunity seems almost too depressing to really consider.

Is it really the only option though?...

Paul_S_1986

Slinky wrote: »

There's nothing to stop you looking for other properties through other agencies whilst keeping this one on the back burner in case it comes good. In your situation I wouldn't even be bothered about viewing with the same agent and disclosing your hand! You don't have to cut your ties with this house until you have an offer accepted elsewhere.

We have been looking for other places but, as mentioned, to suit our budget would involve a significant and essentially unrealistic step down.

Slinky

Paul_S_1986 wrote: »

An increasingly popular suggestion. We would be so disappointed to lose this place as well as the time, money and stress that would have been wasted. That coupled (even trebled) with being forced to significantly step down from an already modest opportunity seems almost too depressing to really consider.

Is it really the only option though?...

Well of course it's not the only option, but given the complete lack of progress so far, who's to say you're not going to be in this same situation in another 6/12 months?

Paul_S_1986

Davesnave wrote: »

Sadly, most of us have had the experience of not living in an ideal world.
Back in the noughties, when vendors suddenly withdrew their property from sale, deciding not to divorce after all, we faced a similar situation. It was the ideal location and property for our business.

Like you, we found the prospect of losing this gem hard to swallow, but instead of moving on mentally, we measured every subsequent property against what had been denied us. None of them was as good. We dithered.

It was only later that we saw other very good opportunities had been missed. Totally our fault.

Yes, I see what you are saying. Of course, we have lost nearly 9 months of ground in the property market now. We continue to look for other properties and would jump at the chance to move away from this place if we found somewhere else suitable.

In fact, it's getting to the point where this process has caused so much stress, frustration and disappointment that we are beginning to resent this house! I think once we were in there we would be as happy as we thought we could be back in October when we first went in, though. However unlikely that seems at this time.

Paul_S_1986

Slinky wrote: »

Well of course it's not the only option, but given the complete lack of progress so far, who's to say you're not going to be in this same situation in another 6/12 months?

I agree with and understand your point. I suppose we could potentially be moving into a house for which we would have paid £165,000 that could, by then, be worth more like £200,000! Or is that just blind optimism?...