Buying house on an unadopted road

ss876

Hello. I am first time buyer and we've put an offer on a house we like which is partly on an unadopted road. The entrance is on the unadopted road and the side is on an adopted road. It is a corner property. We've had our lender, Halifax come back with us needing to provide some sort of documentation to say who is responsible for maintaining the road. This simply doesn't exist as the residents are the ones maintaining it. I am not sure if any work as been done but it's a small area of the estate used by about 6-8 homes. To be honest we're not going to be using that road as our garage is on the adopted side (we could enter the property through here) but we'll have to walk to the unadopted road to access the house via the entrance.   The lender seems to want a formal agreement. The road is maintained well. I can't see any obvious problems we'll have especially as only a few residents will be using that stretch of unadopted road. 

What do we do in this scenario? can someone provide some advice please? if we pull out at this stage we stand to lose a lot of money as our solicitor will need to be paid almost all of his fees for the work carried out as the next step was exchange of contracts and I am not sure when we'll find another house that we like within our budget. So stressed with this sudden issue that has come up as last I was being told we could move in less than a few weeks time. If anyone has any idea please can you help with your advice. It would be much appreciated.

Bookworm105

I cannot believe that there is no documented basis for the other properties accepting how maintenance costs would be shared?
even if there is no formal resident's body, surely there must be something covering how previous works have been paid by each person 

DullGreyGuy

ss876 said:

Hello. I am first time buyer and we've put an offer on a house we like which is partly on an unadopted road. The entrance is on the unadopted road and the side is on an adopted road. It is a corner property. We've had our lender, Halifax come back with us needing to provide some sort of documentation to say who is responsible for maintaining the road. This simply doesn't exist as the residents are the ones maintaining it. I am not sure if any work as been done but it's a small area of the estate used by about 6-8 homes. To be honest we're not going to be using that road as our garage is on the adopted side (we could enter the property through here) but we'll have to walk to the unadopted road to access the house via the entrance.   The lender seems to want a formal agreement. The road is maintained well. I can't see any obvious problems we'll have especially as only a few residents will be using that stretch of unadopted road. 

What do we do in this scenario? can someone provide some advice please? if we pull out at this stage we stand to lose a lot of money as our solicitor will need to be paid almost all of his fees for the work carried out as the next step was exchange of contracts and I am not sure when we'll find another house that we like within our budget. So stressed with this sudden issue that has come up as last I was being told we could move in less than a few weeks time. If anyone has any idea please can you help with your advice. It would be much appreciated.

I'd be with your lender on this one, there are many ways these things can be setup, many disputes arise from it too. It is disappointing that no one has bothered to form an agreement. 

Why is it 6-8 houses? Presumably it's a set number of houses on the road? Arguably the fairest method is each person pays 1/6-8th of any repairs needing to be done. Some try to argue each person is responsible just for the bit of road outside their property but inevitably those nearer the start have the most repairs to do as they have the most vehicles traveling over it. Roads are not cheap to repair properly either.

AskAsk

you could ask the seller to get an agreement signed by the others so that there is something in writing?  it would be in all their interest as it will affect the sale of their properties in future.

sounds like there is only informal agreement when needed so it needs to be sorted but this can be a problem if not everyone agrees.

GDB2222

The way to proceed is simple. Your solicitor explains the issue to your vendor's solicitor, and it is up to the vendor to sort this out to your lender’s satisfaction. If they can’t do so, you have no choice but to walk away. 

The vendor is in a far better position to sort it out than you, anyway.

ss876

Bookworm105 said:

I cannot believe that there is no documented basis for the other properties accepting how maintenance costs would be shared?
even if there is no formal resident's body, surely there must be something covering how previous works have been paid by each person 

Yeah I was wondering the same. The current owner's not been any help. Apparently they don't know about anything it. Infact it seemed like they weren't aware that the road was unadopted in the first place. I find that hard to believe! 

ss876

DullGreyGuy said:

ss876 said:

Hello. I am first time buyer and we've put an offer on a house we like which is partly on an unadopted road. The entrance is on the unadopted road and the side is on an adopted road. It is a corner property. We've had our lender, Halifax come back with us needing to provide some sort of documentation to say who is responsible for maintaining the road. This simply doesn't exist as the residents are the ones maintaining it. I am not sure if any work as been done but it's a small area of the estate used by about 6-8 homes. To be honest we're not going to be using that road as our garage is on the adopted side (we could enter the property through here) but we'll have to walk to the unadopted road to access the house via the entrance.   The lender seems to want a formal agreement. The road is maintained well. I can't see any obvious problems we'll have especially as only a few residents will be using that stretch of unadopted road. 

What do we do in this scenario? can someone provide some advice please? if we pull out at this stage we stand to lose a lot of money as our solicitor will need to be paid almost all of his fees for the work carried out as the next step was exchange of contracts and I am not sure when we'll find another house that we like within our budget. So stressed with this sudden issue that has come up as last I was being told we could move in less than a few weeks time. If anyone has any idea please can you help with your advice. It would be much appreciated.

I'd be with your lender on this one, there are many ways these things can be setup, many disputes arise from it too. It is disappointing that no one has bothered to form an agreement. 

Why is it 6-8 houses? Presumably it's a set number of houses on the road? Arguably the fairest method is each person pays 1/6-8th of any repairs needing to be done. Some try to argue each person is responsible just for the bit of road outside their property but inevitably those nearer the start have the most repairs to do as they have the most vehicles traveling over it. Roads are not cheap to repair properly either.

So it's 6-8 houses in a close, like a dead end t junction. There's two opposite the one we've looked at who wont really be using the unadopted road as they can just get onto their driveway area from the adopted road. There's about 5 houses in the back street. 

ss876

AskAsk said:

you could ask the seller to get an agreement signed by the others so that there is something in writing?  it would be in all their interest as it will affect the sale of their properties in future.

sounds like there is only informal agreement when needed so it needs to be sorted but this can be a problem if not everyone agrees.

That sounds like a good idea, I'll see if I can push for that! 

ss876

GDB2222 said:

The way to proceed is simple. Your solicitor explains the issue to your vendor's solicitor, and it is up to the vendor to sort this out to your lender’s satisfaction. If they can’t do so, you have no choice but to walk away. 

The vendor is in a far better position to sort it out than you, anyway.

Yep that makes sense. We thought we could look at alternate lenders however my solicitor thinks that might not work and he really only deals with high street banks so we'll have no chance but to walk away then. The vendor is really keen on moving soon so hopefully that works in our favour. 

GDB2222

The snag with searching high and low for a lender is that the problem will resurface when you want to sell.

AskAsk

when we lived at a previous property, there was a deed drawn up and a company set up for the maintenance of the road, which was ran by the owners on the road.  we had to show that to the solicitor of the buyer when we sold the property, so i think this is the situation here.

without an agreement of some sort, and ours was pretty formal, it may not be possible to get a mortgage unless you went to a mortgage broker possibly.