neighbour has gate onto my land!!

merchantofvenice

well, whatever you think, I am not a bad person. I personally, wouldn't have bought a house where the only access was the front door. Also he was in dispute with the previous occupants about the gate, so i would assume he was taking the michael.

PasturesNew

It's tricky. This is down to poor planning at the layout/building stage. Anybody with half a brain would have built that property with the side gate and that end parking bay because it would have made the property worth a few quid more....

However, now you're stuck with it.

The trouble is, give an inch and many people take a mile. I can see the whole building skip appearing there as if by magic one day when your back is turned. It's difficult because at the moment you only have one car and so could not use that bay... but that would start to slacken the importance of that space in his mind - and come the day when you buy a lovely new small sports car after years of scrimping, you will find he is using his gate a lot and using it to put his bins out etc.... coming too close to your car/catching it with various things. At this point saying "don't do that" is much harder than it is now.

Damned if you do. Damned if you don't on this one.

I think I would say to him it's OK. But I'd try to set rules/boundaries/expectations on that... the trouble is, if he starts to take the pee it's hard to backtrack.

*shrugs*

I give up ...

Catblue

I would tread carefully regarding negotiations with this neighbour.

He presumably had no right to put the gate in in the first place, and it became so much of an issue that the previous owners of your house had to declare the dispute when selling.

Unless the previous owners gave permission for a gate (and given the dispute, it would appear not), then it was his actions that caused the dispute the last time, so you should bear this in mind when dealing with him. I would be of the opinion that he is trying it on again.

I'd agree with your husband - the gate has got to go. You do not want the neighbour to obtain prescriptive rights to your land. The only question is if you allow the neighbour access this time before you block up the gate for good.

moneysavinmonkey

you could offer to sell him the parking space + access..
if you could get a fair price would offset any devaluation of your property
and would solve the whole thing once and for all!

merchantofvenice

I too, think that it is a bit petty, but men will be men, and dh i think, just doesn't want to open the floodgates as it were, with him knocking because he wants to use it, or just doing what he wants and using it whenever. I knew he would get like this as soon as he turned 30, lol!
I have already stated that I can see their point of view, if anyone can give me a way of making a headstrong man back down, let me know.

merchantofvenice

thanks for understanding.We are not being difficult just to annoy him, we just don't want anybody to walk over us, and potentially devalue our property? We are not really in a dispute, as such, as he asked we said no, and he hasn't come back to ask again. We have never seen him use the gate. We thought it was weird when he referred to it being "our gate", and thought maybe he was testing the water to see if we knew anything about it. when dh speaks to him, he will ask him to remove the hinges that are visible from the outside and make sure the gate is removed.

The thing is i can see why dh wants to say no about the building work, because he works v. hard sometimes 7 days a week and can't be bothered to see that he is keeping to the rules of its use. We don't really want to keep watch on our neighbours.

myhooose

By asking your neighbour to remove the gate i think you are opening up a can of worms and potentially creating a new dispute with your neighbour which you would have to delcare (if asked) when selling the house.

moneysavinmonkey

merchantofvenice wrote: »

thanks for understanding.We are not being difficult just to annoy him, we just don't want anybody to walk over us, and potentially devalue our property? .

being in a dispute with your neighbour can devalue your property.

merchantofvenice

I don't think we are, but we could be, if we assert our right to have the gate removed, which it should have been in the first place. it depends what he says when dh speaks to him. We don't want to be blackmailed over his building work. Important as the building work is to him, it has just highlighted the fact that there remains a gate in his fence, which we thought had been permanently blocked off. The fact that he has been keeping this quiet, does not make us want to bend over backwards to make his life easier.

merchantofvenice

what if we did nothing. and the gate remained in place, and we wanted to sell? Would we have to mention it? As far as I know he doesn't use it, but then he could be using it every day,obviously without permission. Would it matter?