Land not transferred by solicitors

user1977

jabbabroadley said:

the point around planning permission I’m not too sure what I am looking for. The property was built and finished, would our solicitor have received the planning permission details?

If it's a new house then yes, the solicitors must (or ought to) have seen the details to check the house had planning consent, conditions had been complied with, etc. Wasn't anything mentioned about planning at the time?

If you weren't supplied with a copy then you can get all the details from the council's website.

jabbabroadley

I have had a look and I can see drawings that include the totality of the garden of our house. There are several different applications that have been submitted for this plot over time, is there a particular section that I should be reviewing?

am I specifically looking for details of the two plots of lands and their title plans being included within the planning application?

user1977

jabbabroadley said:

am I specifically looking for details of the two plots of lands and their title plans being included within the planning application?

You're wanting to check what size of plot the planners approved i.e. did they require the garden to include the "missing" plot or not?

Bendy_House

jabbabroadley said:

I have check the correspondence with the solicitor and at no point are two plots mentioned.

What does it say - exactly - about you having to check that the boundaries, as marked on the included plans, are correct? 

In what way does their instruction for you to do this refer to the included plans - does it mention 'boundary edged in red' for example?

madteapot

Looks like everyone or most parties involved in the transaction dropped the ball. Other posters are correct, when the title plan is sent the conveyancer relies on you confirming that it matches to what is on the ground. Looking at the image of title plan did you not realise that the red line is almost touching the house in the plan but on the ground it is not ? 

You mentioned sellers included the details about adjacent land in the property information form but those questions don't necessarily mean seller is actually selling that land to you. The question 1.3 is asking about irregular boundaries and 1.4 is about seller purchasing adjacent land. It is not asking if the seller is including the adjacent land in this sale. There is perfectly valid scenario where seller could have purchased any number of adjacent plots but only selling some/one of them. The property information form wouldn't give you strong enough comeback on your solicitors. I would expect them to report/discuss this with you to see if you had any concerns on these answers but this depends upon solicitors. 

Apart from this property information form did the sellers actually send two title numbers correctly to your solicitor? Were two titles mentioned anywhere during the convincing by the sellers solicitor? When signing the TR1 did the seller or their solicitor not realise that there is only one title number on the form ? 

wilfred30

jabbabroadley said:

Thank you there have been many replies to this and most have asked for more information, therefore I will reply to all in one message below

• the house is a new build, end of terrace. Land was owned by our neighbours (previously end of terrace) to the side of their house. They purchased additional land to have enough room to build our house
• The parcel of land not transferred is effectively our garden area
• Our solicitors had received information from the sellers solicitors of the two parcels of land.In the Property Information Form (TA6) provided by the seller, under section 1 in relation to boundaries, the seller did in fact provide details of the additional plot of land and the corresponding title number. 
• The information regarding the two parcels was never explained to us.
• The diagram below/attached is what we were presented with. In yellow is the parcel of land not transferred 

So your solicitor was made aware that there were two Titles instead of one.

Did your solicitor not send you a copy of the Property Information Form TA6 before exchange?

jabbabroadley

In answers provided about the sellers solicitor provided details within the property information form that there were two land parcels with the plot numbers. It was never explained to us by our solicitors that we were to consider 2 plots of land. 

Our solicitors have specifically stated that the sellers solicitor did provide this information in the contract and there was never any communication that the additional plot of land should be included 

jabbabroadley

* sorry did not 

Tiglet2

It sounds like your sellers never instructed their solicitors that there were two titles to sell/transfer to you and their solicitor drafted the papers with one title, not two.  So in fact, neither the seller's solicitor nor your solicitor were aware of the other title.  The PIF is misleading, it is the sale Contract and Transfer which would be needed to reflect both titles in this transaction.  

Neither solicitor can be negligent if they were not aware of the additional parcel of land, either as part of the sale or part of the purchase.

You will probably need to instruct your solicitor to liaise with the seller's solicitor in order to get the sellers to sign the transfer papers over to you, but this will probably cost you and the seller additional fees as it is now a new instruction.

jabbabroadley

The sellers solicitor knew as they had provided details of the two plots in the PIF. The additional plot is owned by the crown now as the building company that owned the land has been dissolved, hence we it’s going to cost £7k plus to transfer.

If the sellers solicitors had provided the information within the PIF, surely they knew that 2 plots had to be transferred, otherwise why mention it?

is this information from the sellers side sufficient enough or should they have explicitly stated within the contract?