Shared access - odd question.

Smodlet

YoungBlueEyes wrote: »

Just thought. This isn't my worry cos it isn't my house! The vendor needs to provide me with a key before we go any further. Let her p1ss off no 6. If she doesn't, I'll want a lump knocked off the AP

I think this is the least you need to do. I do not know how much good it would do to have some legal undertaking signed by Mr. 6 to say "Here's a key and we promise not to change the lock" but without that as a minimum, I would walk away if/while you still can.

Ms. 5, your vendor will encounter this issue with any potential buyer so I would have thought it in her interests to resolve it now. I don't think too many people are just going to shrug this off, YBE.

PasturesNew

There is very rarely "shared" anything. If you stand on any part of it, somebody has to own it. Does number 1 own the bit outside their gate? Does one house own the whole lane?

Once you've established who owns which bit - you then have "who has the right to do what across that land". If the right is pedestrian only for accessing the residence/residential purposes only, then it can't randomly be used as an impromptu football field by neighbours' kids et al. A motorcycle could be stopped from crossing it if it's pedestrian only.
So: Is it pedestrian, or vehicular - and for what purposes can it be used?

Who pays for it? If all six own "the bit adjoining their land", do they all pay for maintenance if required? Or what? If one owns it, can they recharge maintenance to those using it?

The gate: parking. This is just cheeky. You can see why he's done it, we'd all like to have done that if we owned the end house ... but he doesn't have the right to do it - and he can't "gain" ownership after X years if the RoW is written in the deeds.

But, he's doing it ... so it's hard to now come along waving your deeds and saying "I don't like that...." It'd be your right to do so, but dare you?

If you did that and he stopped doing it, would it then mean more of "all and sundry" started using the back alley as a playground, bike race track, place to do a bit more of "what they like"?

Any piece of land that is owned by one and others have rights (which they might or might not know about or understand) has the potential to go horribly wrong.

The man with the car won't like being challenged, for any reasons....

And, of course, this might affect how potential buyers see it when you come to sell.

Ms_Chocaholic

The best time to challenge no 6 is now before you buy, you will know what you're dealing with before parting with your hard-earned cash.

YoungBlueEyes

@Ms Chocaholic - I've only spoken with no 4 cos she was washing her windows when I went to measure up for curtains/furniture etc. She said it'd been that way for ages and she was happy about it cos it made her feel more secure. That's all I have atm. Good point about a new padlock too...

@Money - what did you actually do to get them to behave?

@ReadingTim - You're right, a few £k off the price won't make day-to-day arguments any more bearable.

So is it too much to ask for the vendor to resolve the issue, so that if I buy the house all is as it should be? It's an ex-rental that's empty now, I don't know how far away the vendor lives. Might be as much of a trek for her to go round there as it is for me! (100 miles away).

Or realistically, is it a case of it is what it is, buy it or don't?

PasturesNew

Number 5 can't resolve it ... and if "forced" to, you'd be moving in to a house with a neighbour who hates you before you get the keys .... and they might then decide a "campaign of nonsense" against you.

Just walk .... you know it makes sense. It's hard to walk away ... but other people are not always sane/fair/reasonable.

You'll "wish and wonder" for the rest of your life probably ... but some things have to be done.

YoungBlueEyes

I need to think and type quicker, there's new posts coming while I'm still typing ha haa! Thank you everyone for your replies, even if I haven't mentioned you

I wish now I'd knocked on their door so I could get a measure of them face-to-face. It might be that they're perfectly reasonable lovely people and would give me a key no bother. Slim hope I think.

@PasturesNew - Yes I would dare, but I'd rather not have to. I don't fancy facing however many years of backlash just because I stood up to them.

I'll see what my solic has to say in the morning, but this is looking like a no-go

Red-Squirrel_2

You can tell a lot about the person/people you’d be living next door to by their actions.

It’s always a gamble what new neighbours are like, but you’re lucky here in a way because you’ve got a good warning before moving in. It’s cheaper and less hassle to pull out now than to move again in a year and have to declare a dispute.

ReadingTim

I think it's too late to get them to behave now - this sort of thing should have been nipped in the bud at the outset, not allowed to persist as it has. The next opportunity to take a firm approach would be if they sell and when the new people move in, but as mentioned above, if they thought they were getting an allocated space, they're not going to be too happy to give that up - and even if they know legally it's not theirs, they may take the 'possession is 9/10ths of the law' approach, or will have believed the line that "none of the neighbours mind the gates/us parking there..."

The only thing in mitigation I might say is the extent to which this is a common arrangement in the area in which you're buying. If it is, there might be more local understanding about what is and isn't reasonable behaviour in terms of access, but they could still be outliers, and can make your life less convenient as a result.

Ultimately though, this is merely a variation of the shared driveway issue, which appears on this board with depressing frequency. Search for that, and you'll see all of the arguments back and forth....

All I'll say is that for many, it's a definite no-no/deal breaker, and the fact that so many people have come to this same conclusion surely must tell you something....

Ms_Chocaholic

This has gone from sounding like "a good thing in principle" in #1 to now - I bet you're glad you asked

Smodlet

YBE, have you exchanged yet? I do hope not as if you have, this is all moot.