Garden land dispute..

xyz111

hi
i was sold a property with large front garden and have had it for over 2 years. my neighbor is asking for right to a strip of it due to it complies with
site plotting. but i was sold the property with hard edge to the garden layout that i own right now. there was nothing mentioned in my contract that in the future i would have to give this bit away.
what are my options. Please advise.

many thanks

moneyistooshorttomention

Tell them "You can see where the boundaries are" and then ignore them.

That's what I had to do basically with mine.

Doozergirl

You need to be clearer. Have you checked the boundaries of your title plan against the apparant boundaries on the ground properly?

I'm not quite sure what you're saying. What does 'it complies with site plotting' mean?

There's no one contract in a property transaction, there are a series of documents that make it up and the contract itself that us lay people see makes no sense to anyone as it refers to a longer, standard legal document.

You say your neighbour wants access, not specifically ownership. Is there supposed to be a shared area?

moneyistooshorttomention

I read it as the neighbour wants ownership of this stretch of OP's garden. OP refers to "giving it away" about that bit.

I'm assuming that what may have happened here is the developer did an overall diagram of the estate or that specific house or something and put down measurements that were inaccurate?

It's very difficult to measure an area of land exactly accurately - by the time one takes into account the fact that land isn't perfectly flat.

I've known an instance where the developer has used inaccurate measurements (maybe because of not taking into account the ground not being flat??) and it looks like they might have said there was more land than what was actually available - cue for a neighbour deciding they haven't got all "their" land and therefore another neighbour must have some of "their" land too. But the other neighbour only had the size of plot the developer said - so they hadn't gained any land and the fact that neighbour 1 felt they had a smidgen less land than plans said turned out not to mean neighbour 2 had gone land-grabbing (as they didn't have any extra).

I expect it's something along these lines.

Doozergirl

Perhaps the OP could clarify.

As it is, you've said more about what it might be than they have about what it is. We know that developers put things in the wrong place a lot and the OP is only referring to what is on the ground at present.

Jon_01

Shouldn't it be a case of what's shown on the deeds as held by the Land Register?

xyz111

there are two garden doors and there is a central post, so the strip they are demanding is on their side of post.
currently on their side in front of door there are paving slabs that join back into their driveway and rest of area is grassy and mine with hard boundary in form on strip kerb flush with ground level.

if they take strip straight from post then they will find my sewer and utility manhole in the way..

i have escalated the matter with lawyer and house seller...


what rights do i have ...as currently things stand i own it... i would not like to clash and argue but at the same time not comfortable to give it away and feel it will bring down my house value...


thanks..

littleboo

A picture or two would help.....

Doozergirl

littleboo wrote: »

A picture or two would help.....

It it would. As would the title plan.

xyz111

the thing is ...front garden stands with well defined boundaries which do not match the plot setting out plan i can see that...but isn't something they should take up with seller as they got less for their money...i have not issues...

p.s. how to insert image as its asking for http:// address

Doozergirl

You post pictures to a hosting website like tinypic or imgur.

Then you may need to post a broken link as you need a certain number of posts before you can post links. We'll fix it.

What is important is what is on your title plans with the land registry, not what is on the ground. The land on the plan is officially registered land ownership.

A fence is just a fence and a "plot setting out plan" is a just a plan. I presume here that you're talking about some sort of bew build developer's illustration?