New build parking space issue

pamaloola86

Hi, I will try to keep this as brief as possible. We recently have recently discovered after putting our house on the market and almost finalising a sale that our parking space is not on our signed deeds. 
Our solicitor has gone to the house builder and they have said that a management company is now responsible for the parking. The management company have come back and said that the space is not allocated to us and therefore we will need to go back to the house builder. 
The parking space is NOT on the deeds and the solicitor that we initially bought the house with has since gone bust. We were told that the parking space was ours by the house builder and it also has a plaque with our plot number on the space. 
This doesn't only affect us, our neighbours are parking in their allocated plot number spaces, however they are not correct with the deeds.
We have never received a bill through the management company, which makes sense. The space we are parking in is supposed to belong to someone else who is located in a flat;we are in a house next to the flats and the mix up is with us and the flats/visitors parking spaces. 
Who can we turn to, our solicitor is saying to sell the house without allocated parking. We have already lost one sale on our house because of the issue. We keep going round in circles!
Thanks.

user1977

Isn't your current solicitor offering you any advice? Or is the problem that they acted for you in the purchase and it might be (partly) their fault?

pinkshoes

You will need to go back to your original paperwork when you purchased the house and find evidence that the parking DID belong to you. 

There should be an original plan showing all the houses along with their parking, plus you should have somewhere in your paperwork stating that the property included a parking space. 

I'm afraid this is going to take a LONG time to sort out, and it's unlikely you'll be able to sell until it is sorted. I'd go back to the house builder with your evidence and get them to agree that the parking space is yours.

How many flats are there? It would be £3 to download the deeds to each property so you can find out which parking space belongs to which property.

loubel

Are you meant to have an allocated space (according to your deeds) but have been parking in the wrong one and are struggling to work out where it should be? Or did your house not come with a space but nobody realised this up to now?

propertyrental

When you originally signed off on the transfer, did you not notice that the parking space was not included in the Plan? Your solicitor at the time could only be guided by you as to what you were intending to purchase. Had you raised the matter with them at the time they could have easily sorted it out.

It will now take time to resolve due to the buck-passing and number of people potentially involved.

ThisIsWeird

No idea if this helps, but worth a read, I think:

https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/professional-indemnity-insurance/sif-and-psyroc

user1977

ThisIsWeird said:

No idea if this helps, but worth a read, I think:

https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/professional-indemnity-insurance/sif-and-psyroc

Was that the link you intended to attach? It doesn't seem relevant to the OP.

ThisIsWeird

user1977 said:

ThisIsWeird said:

No idea if this helps, but worth a read, I think:

https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/professional-indemnity-insurance/sif-and-psyroc

Was that the link you intended to attach? It doesn't seem relevant to the OP.

Argh, not sure!
I surfed for something like 'conveyancer's liability after retirement', and it appeared to my non-legal eyes that the article concerned a standard type of liability that all solicitors carry, and how this article suggested it may last longer than originally expected. 
But, I don't know. It would make my nose bleed to try and decipher it.
I presume that operational solicitors and conveyancers must be insured up to their eyeballs? It would seem reasonable to me that this did not just expire the moment they retired? So I'm hoping that the OP may still be covered should they need to claim against their original conveyancer.
But, I don't know.

Schwarzwald

pamaloola86 said:

Who can we turn to

your legal pack and legal documents from the intiial purchase. if you bought it wtih a parking space, it should be mentioned in the purchase agreements and/or deeds, no?

Mr.Generous

I've bought and sold quite a few properties. In every case the solicitor has sent me a copy of the land registry for the property with the plot (and remote parking spot in 2 instances) and asked me to confirm the plan matches what I am buying (or selling). The solicitor has not visited the property on any occasion. If the nominated plot from the builder didn't match the land registry records it would have been down to me to point this out. How did it work for your purchase?

Land_Registry

pamaloola86 said:

Hi, I will try to keep this as brief as possible. We recently have recently discovered after putting our house on the market and almost finalising a sale that our parking space is not on our signed deeds. 
Our solicitor has gone to the house builder and they have said that a management company is now responsible for the parking. The management company have come back and said that the space is not allocated to us and therefore we will need to go back to the house builder. 
The parking space is NOT on the deeds and the solicitor that we initially bought the house with has since gone bust. We were told that the parking space was ours by the house builder and it also has a plaque with our plot number on the space. 
This doesn't only affect us, our neighbours are parking in their allocated plot number spaces, however they are not correct with the deeds.
We have never received a bill through the management company, which makes sense. The space we are parking in is supposed to belong to someone else who is located in a flat;we are in a house next to the flats and the mix up is with us and the flats/visitors parking spaces. 
Who can we turn to, our solicitor is saying to sell the house without allocated parking. We have already lost one sale on our house because of the issue. We keep going round in circles!
Thanks.

Go back to what you contracted to buy. Check the land registry information for both property and parking space inc the actual Transfer of part relied upon when first bought. 

It reads as if you’ve done that already and discovered the parking space wasn’t actually transferred to your property so all about the contract. If that also didn’t include the space then options inc revised sale without or trying to buy it off the legal owner. 

If the contract and transfer differ then that’s an issue to take up with your conveyancer at the time and follow that through. It probably won’t get you the parking space though but may lead to some form of compensation