Buying a piece of land from neighbours

davidmcn

Mickey666 said:

davidmcn said:

Why on earth would it be any business of the lender what other property I might want to buy?

As I explained above, they won't want to be only able to repossess the "original" property and not the additional part added on later. It would be particularly problematic if for example the borrower has built an extension on the extra bit of land - how do you sell a repossessed property if it doesn't include the kitchen?

Hmm, that would certainly be a peculiar scenario.  I suppose PP could be granted to extend a property across two different titles, in my experience this sort of thing has not been explicity checked as part of the planning process.  Can't think why anyone would want to do such a thing though.

My property is split across four titles, but although contiguous they are very distinct from each other, so I was thinking about that sort of scenario rather than an additional piece of land so close that the existing house could be extended on to it.

The planning process pays no attention at all to how the property is registered or which parts are mortgaged. And even if there's not actually an extension on the land, it's obviously going to be off-putting to buyers if they're told that a bit of the garden or driveway isn't included (and is still owned by the disgruntled recently-evicted borrower).

Anamox

£1000 from the solicitor is too much I believe. I did this recently and it cost me £245 for the solicitor and £300 for the surveyor to draw up the plans. Perhaps my solicitor was good to me as she was also doing £1000s of other work for me at the same time... but she seemed to tell me it as if it was a fixed price for a land transaction.

Try using Bark for finding solicitors and surveyors to keep costs down, you just say what you want and they'll pay Bark to get your details and quote you - the upside is they won't be paying for your details unless they know their quote is going to be better than the other 5 who will quote you.

trex227

I used to work at a solicitors and one of the parts of my job was doing the conveyancing quotes. Our legal fees were not much less than the standard conveyancing fees, as davidmcn says they tend to be more fiddly transactions that solicitors/conveyancers hate dealing with. I found that quite a high percentage of the transactions don't ever go through as the parties got in dispute with each other, so there was a lot of back and forth and as we were no move no fee eventually resulted in no fees. As has been said you should be able to request no searches though so that will reduce the overall price.

If the Land Registry plan to your house is a good one and the new land can be clearly marked on it (e.g. squaring off the land or the new land is already marked as a section on the plan) you may be able to use this. If not you will need a surveyor for a Land Registry compliant plan as Anamox says.

Mickey666

davidmcn said:

Mickey666 said:

davidmcn said:

Why on earth would it be any business of the lender what other property I might want to buy?

As I explained above, they won't want to be only able to repossess the "original" property and not the additional part added on later. It would be particularly problematic if for example the borrower has built an extension on the extra bit of land - how do you sell a repossessed property if it doesn't include the kitchen?

Hmm, that would certainly be a peculiar scenario.  I suppose PP could be granted to extend a property across two different titles, in my experience this sort of thing has not been explicity checked as part of the planning process.  Can't think why anyone would want to do such a thing though.

My property is split across four titles, but although contiguous they are very distinct from each other, so I was thinking about that sort of scenario rather than an additional piece of land so close that the existing house could be extended on to it.

The planning process pays no attention at all to how the property is registered or which parts are mortgaged. And even if there's not actually an extension on the land, it's obviously going to be off-putting to buyers if they're told that a bit of the garden or driveway isn't included (and is still owned by the disgruntled recently-evicted borrower).

That raises an interesting scenario.  Imagine a large property with a self-contained annexe.  For IHT purposes it’s in the owner’s interest for the property to be valued as low as possible.  The annexe is only accessible over the land of the main property.   Would it be possible to separate the self-contained annexe into a separate title WITHOUT giving that new title any access over the main property’s land, ie effectively making it an ‘island’ with no access?   This is no problem to an owner of both properties but it would make the ‘annexe’ effectively worthless in its own right as it would be effective unsaleable.  Would such a split be a legal way to reduce the total market value of the two properties?

davidmcn

Mickey666 said:

davidmcn said:

Mickey666 said:

davidmcn said:

Why on earth would it be any business of the lender what other property I might want to buy?

As I explained above, they won't want to be only able to repossess the "original" property and not the additional part added on later. It would be particularly problematic if for example the borrower has built an extension on the extra bit of land - how do you sell a repossessed property if it doesn't include the kitchen?

Hmm, that would certainly be a peculiar scenario.  I suppose PP could be granted to extend a property across two different titles, in my experience this sort of thing has not been explicity checked as part of the planning process.  Can't think why anyone would want to do such a thing though.

My property is split across four titles, but although contiguous they are very distinct from each other, so I was thinking about that sort of scenario rather than an additional piece of land so close that the existing house could be extended on to it.

The planning process pays no attention at all to how the property is registered or which parts are mortgaged. And even if there's not actually an extension on the land, it's obviously going to be off-putting to buyers if they're told that a bit of the garden or driveway isn't included (and is still owned by the disgruntled recently-evicted borrower).

That raises an interesting scenario.  Imagine a large property with a self-contained annexe.  For IHT purposes it’s in the owner’s interest for the property to be valued as low as possible.  The annexe is only accessible over the land of the main property.   Would it be possible to separate the self-contained annexe into a separate title WITHOUT giving that new title any access over the main property’s land, ie effectively making it an ‘island’ with no access?   This is no problem to an owner of both properties but it would make the ‘annexe’ effectively worthless in its own right as it would be effective unsaleable.  Would such a split be a legal way to reduce the total market value of the two properties?

No. It would be irrelevant if they've all got the same owner. It's pretty commonplace for a property to be spread over more than one title, or for a landlord to hold several properties under one registered title, there are no legal implications one way or another (though amalgamating the titles puts aside any doubt about whether the jigsaw pieces fit together).

Slithery

Mickey666 said:

Would it be possible to separate the self-contained annexe into a separate title WITHOUT giving that new title any access over the main property’s land, ie effectively making it an ‘island’ with no access?

LR won't just split a title if you ask them to, there has to be a valid reason (eg sale of part).

Otherwise I would split my land into 13 titles and live in a massive camper van all year round. As long as I moved it to a different part every 28 days I wouldn't need planning permission

lincroft1710

Mickey666 said:

OK, so what if the owner wanted to gift the self-contained annexe property to a child?  That would surely be a good reason for LR to split the title but there would still be no access to the annexe property except over the other property's land, making the annexe property almost worthless on the open market.

In practice many annexes only get conditional planning permission, one of the conditions being that the ownership of the annex is not separated from that of the main house.

Mickey666

No other issues with doing this then?