House Builder Conveyed Wrong Plans to Neighbour - Parking Issues

ConveyancingConundrum

Hi there, I hope someone will be able to advise on what my next steps should be/ what my rights are with this very stressful situation. TIA for taking the time to read!

The Issue
I bought a home from a one of the big nationwide housebuilders last year as did my next door neighbour.

My issue is that there is a contradiction between the title deeds for my property and title deeds for my neighbours property. This has caused a very frustrating parking issue that is neither our fault or our neighbors fault.

To access both our properties you have to drive though a shared drive with the restriction of no parking. There is a hammerhead area enclosed within the boundary of my neighbours that is highlighted in yellow on my title deeds and marked as a shared drive with the restriction of not being able to park on this area. I need access over this area to maneauver in to my 2 parking spaces.

On my neighbours title deeds it's not showing as highlighted yellow as part of the shared access and therefore my neighbours are able to park in this area in accordance with their title deeds. They have a separate driveway with allocated parking but would like to use this additional area for guest parking and they thought they were buying a property with four spaces to allow them to do this.

It's clearly the neighbours plans where the oversight happened and the area was intended to be part of the shared drive. I say this because on their plans there is a number of things wrong, that doesn't reflect what was actually built. The houses were the showhomes so were here for 5 years or so before we purchased them, however, on my neighbours plans our house type is different and our parking spaces are located in a different place. If this reflected what was actually built we wouldn't need the contested turning point. We also submitted a SAR request to the housebuilder and we have an internal email where they say that our neighbours were given an old plan where the yellow highlight was missing and that was their internal error. Our plan accurately reflects what was built.

What I've done So Far
I've raised this with the housebuilder and it's been a very stressful and unproductive experience. It's my belief that they aren't acting in good faith and that they are trying to wear me down into accepting a comprimise worse that what I purchased at the bare minimum cost to them. I feel pretty broken by the whole thing.

I've also raised it with our conveyencers and they said that as they represented both us and our neighbours that there is a conflict of interest. I would have thought that they should have compaired the plans/ cross referenced? We completed a few months prior to our neighbours.

Desired Outcome
The number one thing I want is what I purchased on my title deeds. This would allow us to park freely with plenty of room to manuver and the outlook would remain unchanged. If I'm not allowed that and access to my parking spaces are impeeded I never would of purchase this house. Parking issues are very stressful and there were plenty of other options in this area without any restricted parking.
I'm willing to make a comprimise, however the housebuilder has suggested signing over a small bit of land opposite to make a smaller turning point. However this would look unsightly (currently lovey green planted area) and it would be very tight (size of area restricted by stone wall) and it would be too tight to get into the second space if the first was occupied. They feel that this and a small amount of compensation is a resonable response. As I wouldn't have purchase the house with this parking situation I don't agree.

Side Issue
As there was so much wrong with our neighbours plan, another issue was their boundry was showing as going right up against our house with our side entrance on the opposite side. On our plans (and in real life) our side entrace is on our neighbours side and within our boundry. This part has already been resloved as I think it wasn't contested.
Our neighbours have told us that they highlighted to the housebuilder that they were building our side entrace on their side and it didn't match what was on their plans before they exchanged. Surely they would have compaired the plans at this stage and spotted the issue? 

Thanks for anyone who's made it this far. If anyone knows if I have to accept a situation worse than what's on my title deeds or what my next steps shoud be/ what my rights are or any advice at all that would be great thank you.

doodling

Hi,

Some questions:
1. Who owns the shared driveway (it would surprise me if ownership was shared).
2. What gives you / your neighbours the right to drive on it?
3. What gives your neighbours the right to park on it - you are implying that they own it by saying that they have the right to park on it.

With respect to the conveyancers:
1. You would not expect that they would compare different transactions by different people.
2. It sounds like they may (only "may" so don't get your hopes up) have been negligent in failing to secure your rights to drive over the whole of the area identified as a right of way.
3. They almost certainly have a conflict of interest.
4. The fact that they are not talking to you is irrelevant as you almost certainly need independent legal advice to understand whether your conveyancers have been negligent, whether you need you to pursue the builders or whether you are without a course of action.

The best strategy is to get independent legal advice.  The resolution to this will depend on exactly what all the legal documents said and we can't read them from here.

loubel

As you bought first, you already had a right of way over the land before your neighbour bought it and nothing in the Transfer to them would override this (although it should have been made clear to them).

It is your neighbour who needs to raise this with their solicitors/the developers to establish why they were not made aware of this prior to purchase. You need to make clear to them (as politely as you can given you are neighbours) that the access needs to be kept clear notwithstanding their complaint to the developer.

If they keep blocking it then you could instruct a solicitor to write to them.

ConveyancingConundrum

doodling said:

Hi,

Some questions:
1. Who owns the shared driveway (it would surprise me if ownership was shared).
2. What gives you / your neighbours the right to drive on it?
3. What gives your neighbours the right to park on it - you are implying that they own it by saying that they have the right to park on it.

With respect to the conveyancers:
1. You would not expect that they would compare different transactions by different people.
2. It sounds like they may (only "may" so don't get your hopes up) have been negligent in failing to secure your rights to drive over the whole of the area identified as a right of way.
3. They almost certainly have a conflict of interest.
4. The fact that they are not talking to you is irrelevant as you almost certainly need independent legal advice to understand whether your conveyancers have been negligent, whether you need you to pursue the builders or whether you are without a course of action.

The best strategy is to get independent legal advice.  The resolution to this will depend on exactly what all the legal documents said and we can't read them from here.

Thanks so much for the information.

To answer your points:
1. Who owns the shared driveway (it would surprise me if ownership was shared).
We each own the bit of the shared drive in front of our respective houses. We have to drive past house 1, 2 and 3 over their part of the shared drives that they each own and my neighbour is on the end. So if I were to park on my part of the shared drive my neighbour would be completely blocked from driving onto their driveway. So they own the turning point just as I own the bit of the shared drive they need to drive over to access their driveway. Hopefully that makes sense!
2. What gives you / your neighbours the right to drive on it?
It's highlighted on the title deeds as a shared drive with the restricted covenant of not being able to park on or block the shared drive at any time. On my deeds this includes the turning point but not on theirs (the yellow highlight is missing).
3. What gives your neighbours the right to park on it - you are implying that they own it by saying that they have the right to park on it. 
By their title deeds there is no restricted covenent as it isn't highlighted as part of the shared drive. If you go by my title deeds they do include the turning point as part of the shared drive so the restricted covenent of no parking would apply. Both title deeds are registered with the land registary with this contradiction.
It's very frustrating as they've essentially been accidentally given an extra two parking spaces at our expence (not with them personally they're very reasonable and nice).

1. You would not expect that they would compare different transactions by different people.
I would have thought that when doing the conveyencing for our neighbours they would have had to review existing boundries to check for a contradiction? 
2. It sounds like they may (only "may" so don't get your hopes up) have been negligent in failing to secure your rights to drive over the whole of the area identified as a right of way.
They have confirmed to me that we do have right of way over that area and it's all been correctly registed with the land registry. The problem is that the neighbours also have their registered correctly showing that it's not shared access on theirs. But surely it can't be both! The MD of the housebuilder has said "Despite what was depicted on your Conveyance Plan we are now unable to offer you rights over the part of the area of shared access which has been conveyed to your neighbour." But the conveyencer contradicts this and we registered first!
3. They almost certainly have a conflict of interest.
Yes I thought this may be the case. My neighbours are happy to work with us on this to get a solution.
4. The fact that they are not talking to you is irrelevant as you almost certainly need independent legal advice to understand whether your conveyancers have been negligent, whether you need you to pursue the builders or whether you are without a course of action.
Thank you for your advice, much appreciated.

ConveyancingConundrum

loubel said:

As you bought first, you already had a right of way over the land before your neighbour bought it and nothing in the Transfer to them would override this (although it should have been made clear to them).

It is your neighbour who needs to raise this with their solicitors/the developers to establish why they were not made aware of this prior to purchase. You need to make clear to them (as politely as you can given you are neighbours) that the access needs to be kept clear notwithstanding their complaint to the developer.

If they keep blocking it then you could instruct a solicitor to write to them.

Thank you for your advice. I thought that may be the case as how could something be signed over to someone else once we've already purched the right of way over it. 

We get on great with the neighbours, we're all reasonable people and understand that we've all been disadvantaged by the housebuilders mistake. They're trying to keep it clear as much as they can which is really nice of them but they have guests and from their point of view bought a house with 4 spaces. We'd like to sort it out directly with the housebuilder but they are treating it as if we've done something wrong and need to conceed. Thanks for your help. 

RAS

You need to get independent legal advice but I suspect you've got this a***about face.

You bought a house with a restriction on parking in the hammerhead.

It's your neighbours who have a problem with the developers. The developers cannot sell clear title to something over which they'd already sold the right of clear access to some else. It's your neighbours who need to pursue the developers for compensation. 

Explain this to the neighbours. If they play ball, support them in tackling the developer. If not you're going to have take legal action against the neighbour.

UnderOffer

Just checking, but have you downloaded a latest copy of your neighbours title deeds/plan from the Land Registry site to see what was registered with them? I read you have a copy and the builders indicated the neighbours were given an incorrect version, but I’d check with LR what copy they have on file.
You could just be looking at an incorrect copy provided by neighbour compared to the formal version. 

silvercar

Any advice from @Land_Registry? 

I thought that LR check new registrations to avoid this sort of situation? (Certainly when we were involved in purchasing a flat that came with a parking space, there was a delay while LR had to check that previously submitted registrations didn’t conflict.)

Land_Registry

silvercar said:

Any advice from @Land_Registry? 

I thought that LR check new registrations to avoid this sort of situation? (Certainly when we were involved in purchasing a flat that came with a parking space, there was a delay while LR had to check that previously submitted registrations didn’t conflict.)

We do and the registration jigsaw is a mass of pieces that are then pieced together over time. In this example it appears it's a new development of some sort so the original titles starts up as a single developer title out of which each plot is then sold, bought and registered.
Suffice to day mistakes can and do happen, sometimes on the part of the developer and their conveyancer who draw up an initial estate plan but then go off piste for some reason on some p,lots; similarly sometimes the fence erector gets it wrong and puts the new plot fence up in the wrong place, namely off plan as the lie of the land makes them do it; and of course we can also get it wrong, I'd like to say we never do, but the developer's jigsaw inc parking spaces, garages, floor levels, visitor spaces etc etc can make the jigsaw much harder to nail in some cases
No excuses though as if mistakes are made, wherever that maybe, they are always repairable but much depends on how and when made and how easy it is to then create a new jigsaw piece to make it fit in a way that say the plot owners, developer and conveyancers all agree.
The now neighbouring plot owners are key to that initial process as their desired outcome needs to be a mutual one and if it's not creating the new pieces will be tricky.
There's no specifics I can add re the OP as none shared re title number etc so it is very much down to the conveyancers to act on their client's instructions as to what they want the outcome to be and for the conveyancer to then do their best to achieve that.
That may mean one party transfers a part to the other, or they exchange parts, or the developer transfers an extra part to solve things. It's rarely a case of simply moving a space or fence etc as what's been registered and how will have relied upon all the factors mentioned. Most by way of legal deeds/plans so any new changes would need to follow the same route