Please, seek advice

darasipas

We have recently bought a maisonette on the first floor. We were told by estate agents we will be able to use garden as a shared with ground floor neighbour. Today after two months we bought it we found out that the whole garden belongs to our neighbour. We know we should've check it before we bought it, but we were assured that this was shared garden. Even they showed us entrance to the garden and the whole garden when we did our viewing. The neighbour rents the flat from council. We feel very frustrated with estate agents and do not know what to do. Is it possible to get the piece of land from the council? Should we seek any compensation from estate agents? Thank you for your answers.

mini

I am in no way an expert but I would have thought it was your solicitors job to go through details with you, usually estate agents have a disclaimer on their home information, I suspect you'd need to prove they deliberately misled you to get a sale, you have my sympathy we have been lied to several times by our estate agent:mad:

Ian_W

Ditto, no expert and agree with the comments about your solicitor but you also need to look again at what was in the written estate agent particulars - does it describe the garden as shared? If it doesn't I think you're in difficulty unless there was someone else present when you were shown the garden. If it does then I don't think they'd have committed it to paper unless that's what they were told by their client - the vendor. If that's the case I think further contact with your solicitor is in order, probably is in any case.
You also need to check the situation with the Council - is it the person who rents the flat who's told you it's theirs? They could be telling porkies! If the council confirms the garden belongs to downstairs and you have no right of shared access it's highly unlikely they can sell you the land as someone else is currently renting it as part of the flat downstairs.
You need to establish what exactly the situation is and armed with that see your solicitor and get advice. You can complain and maybe even get Trading Standards involved if the EA is at fault but it's not clear from what you've said who is to blame. It may be the EA, the vendor, the renter or even your own solicitor.

zzzLazyDaisy

When you buy a property, your solicitor obtains a copy of the title (deeds) from the Land Registry. This shows what you are buying, including any land/garden around the property, parking spaces etc.

Therefore you are deemed to have knowledge, through your solicitor.

Most solicitors will go through all the paperwork with you before you sign the contract. If your solicitor did not do this, you may be able to make a complaint through their compaints procedure.

I doubt that trading standards would be interested, it is not their area.

I can't see the council being interested either.

Daisy

WHA

The fault clearly lies with the estate agent who appears to have lied to you.

I don't see how the solicitor can be faulted if he had no knowledge of the alleged "shared garden". If the garden was mentioned in the estate agent's leaftet, or if either the estate agent or yourself had mentioned it to the solicitor, then they'd have picked it up, but how were they supposed to know something that has been (perhaps only verbally) communicated between the estate agent and the buyer? I presume the deeds and plan showed only the building in question and made no comment about garden - this would be normal for your purchase.

When we bought our house, our solicitor quite rightly picked-up a few items from the estate agent leaflet, such as front and rear porches and the conservatory, and righly queried planning and building reg permissions from the sellers solicitors. If the leaflet hadn't shown front and rear pictures, the solicitor would never have known about the porches and wouldn't have known to query them. The house also had a "loft conversion" which didn't meet planning regs, but it wasn't mentioned in the estate agent leaflet, so the solicitor knew nothing about it. However the valuer picked it up and then we got the work corrected and building regs approval at the seller's expense before completion.

By all means, blame the solicitors for things they do get wrong, but you can't blame them for things they had no knowledge of. It is important to make sure that you make everything clear to your solicitor about the property, including any verbal assurances, so that they can be properly dealt with.

cattie

Have you read through your lease as I would have expected a mention there somewhere if a share of the garden was included in the purchase of your maisonette? If there is no mention, then you have no legal right to a share of the garden unfortunately.

As pointed out by other posters, estate agents blurb is not to be relied on & it could well be that misleading information was given to them by the previous owners of your maisonette.