Boundary not advertised correctly and vendor not playing ball....

boromanc89

davidmcn said:

boromanc89 said:

We asked the vendor to consider buying the land - she has refused.

Is the council even offering it for sale? If they were willing to sell then I'd expect them to do that rather than just grant long leases.

Yes, I have said that in my post.
To me, 50 years is not a long lease (I live in a leasehold flat)

getmore4less

Just realised when you do a land reg search there would have been a good chance the bit the council owned was registered

That is one way you determine boundaries is look at the plots around the one you are looking at.

boromanc89

AdrianC said:

The council can't just "take the land back". Not for the next 27 years. You would have a lease on it.

So that puts you into a straight decision between the only possible four options...

1. Insist the vendor buys it. You've asked, they've refused. It'd delay your purchase anyway.

2. Buy the house, then buy the land. Maybe try and reduce the agreed price by £4k. You say you aren't willing to do that.

3. Accept that the lease is far longer than your likely tenure, so it isn't your problem. Then figure other options at your leisure while you're in residence.

4. Walk away.

If 1, 2 and 3 aren't options, that only leaves 4.

But don't forget to thank your solicitor for doing his job properly, in determining the reality of the situation.

Personally, I think you're being harsh on the vendor in seeing this as some kind of deliberate bait and switch. The property isn't registered - so they've not moved there recently, and are probably aged? They probably simply regard that as "their land", and haven't realised or have forgotten the precise legal detail. You only mention one person - perhaps her now-deceased husband dealt with all that, and she didn't know the reality?

I don't think she has maliciously done this.  I expect she and her husband agreed the lease knowing they would be dead before it finished (to put it bluntly.  I believe her husband has died as she is the sole vendor).  I expect she simply won't see this as a problem. She signed the documents so I don't think ignorance is a defence here.  I have met her, she is elderly but sharp as a tack and comes across as intelligent and educated.  She also lives with her middle aged son, who would have been in his 20s when the garden was leased.  I certainly don't intend to browbeat or bully an elderly lady who probably just doesn't see things as we do, but we need to ensure our purchase is financially viable.

eddddy

Are you saying that the council is willing to sell the land for £4k? And are they prepared to move quite quickly?

If so, you can ask your solicitor to deal with buying the house and buying the land as linked transactions. i.e. Ensure that both contracts are exchanged at the same time - so you don't end up with just the house or just the land.

But that will increase your legal costs, and the council might expect you to cover their legal costs as well. So you might want to consider reducing your offer by £4k plus an amount to cover the extra unexpected legal costs. 

MoneySeeker1

Seems to me all you can do is say to her "Have another £4,000 for the house - and that money is specifically for you to use to buy that bit of garden off the Council. Sign here that that is what you will do with our £4,000".

If she's still acting obtuse - be prepared to push it a bit by offering an extra £5,000 - of which £4,000 is to be legally tied-down as what she must use to buy the garden off the Council and the other £1,000 is a bribe to her personally in effect to do that (called "in case you have any solicitor costs from making this amendment to 'clarify' the situation").

greyteam1959

The elderly owner probable can't be bothered with all the hassle buying the land.

Doozergirl

boromanc89 said:

davidmcn said:

boromanc89 said:

We asked the vendor to consider buying the land - she has refused.

Is the council even offering it for sale? If they were willing to sell then I'd expect them to do that rather than just grant long leases.

Yes, I have said that in my post.
To me, 50 years is not a long lease (I live in a leasehold flat)

In legal terms, it is.  

I've said it before this week, but the worst bit of a situation isn't the situation itself, but how you deal with it.   This isn't insurmountable, it doesn't sound like it's an expensive or valuable piece of land and it can be resolved.  The solicitors have done their work correctly and there is a quote in hand.  

My in-laws had a similar situation and the purchase was straightforward.  

It isn't registered, which someone else has already said means that this property was purchased more than two decades ago.   This isn't some deliberate ploy by the vendor to mislead, this is just something that has never been an issue to the vendor who probably hasn't even thought about it in years if they were even aware.  What is an issue to some is not an issue to others.   I'd class it as a delay and something to be negotiated, not a  disaster.   

This is just one of those things that extends purchase time whilst it gets sorted out.  It is also quite possible that you can sort it yourself once purchased if you're desperate to move it forward, ir deal with council separatelt and simultaneously. 

Take some decent advice and don't catastrophise about it.   The land comes with the house, it's going nowhere.   You're just dealing with an old lady - I do believe the prerogative of the role is to be obtuse.  😉

davidmcn

boromanc89 said:

getmore4less said:

the council bit,  what rights of access do they have in the lease

Is there any other access to it like the other boundaries are to other council owned property with road access.

or maybe totally enclosed by private property.

probably the biggest risk is they don't renew then  change it to a building plot if there is access but that would be 27/50 down the road.

It also says "the term hereby created may be determined at any time by either party giving to the other three months notice" - does this mean the council can shorten the lease term if they give 3 months notice? I really need my solicitor to explain this legalese to me

Yes, it's a three month rolling break - either party can terminate. So it's not even a certain 27 year term.

Why is the vendor refusing to make the sale conditional on the council land being purchased (no matter who is paying for it)? While it will complicate matters, it's unlikely to take any longer than her readvertising and starting from scratch with another buyer (who is likely to have similar concerns).

boromanc89

davidmcn said:

boromanc89 said:

getmore4less said:

the council bit,  what rights of access do they have in the lease

Is there any other access to it like the other boundaries are to other council owned property with road access.

or maybe totally enclosed by private property.

probably the biggest risk is they don't renew then  change it to a building plot if there is access but that would be 27/50 down the road.

It also says "the term hereby created may be determined at any time by either party giving to the other three months notice" - does this mean the council can shorten the lease term if they give 3 months notice? I really need my solicitor to explain this legalese to me

Yes, it's a three month rolling break - either party can terminate. So it's not even a certain 27 year term.

Why is the vendor refusing to make the sale conditional on the council land being purchased (no matter who is paying for it)? While it will complicate matters, it's unlikely to take any longer than her readvertising and starting from scratch with another buyer (who is likely to have similar concerns).

That is even worse then. 

I don't know, I was hoping her solicitor would come back with a counter suggestion if she refused to buy the land, but all I got was an email from our solicitors office saying she has refused to buy it.   Unfortunately my solicitor is out of the office for a week so I have a week to stew about this(!)

We don't want to walk away from the house as we do feel there must be a solution, and even if it means us footing the bill, but we need her to cooperate to offer us some more security than the current status quo.  The easiest thing would be for her to buy the land, even if we pay for it but then I don't know how legally the timing works to ensure we don't lose our money if the sale falls through before completion.

AdrianC

They have every right to say "Nope, we're not going to do anything about this."
You cannot force them to do anything, except by threatening to pull out of the purchase.

You need to decide if this is a showstopper for you or not. Do you REALLY want to walk away from the house over this? If so, just do it. If not, get on with the purchase.