Extended garden..no permission??

russbeck

I don't know if this is the right place but here goes.. My husband and I are in the process of buying a house. The house is exactly what we need and has a massive back garden for our 2 young children. However our solicitor rang last week to say the the property has been extended as the boundary on some plans don't match another. The sellers solicitor says there is nothing in the deeds to say they had permission. Our solicitor says this may affect the value of the house so has sent the plans to our mortgage company. The way she spoke, after a while if nothing is said, the land stays part of the property. Is this correct? She gave it a name but I cannot remember what she called it. We have checked maps.live.com and the garden is now about 3 times as big as on another map we have seen. It looks like a row of around 5 houses that all back onto a main road, have all extended onto a very large grass verge. We don't want to buy the property then have most of the back garden taken away. Can anyone tell how long the land has to be claimed for before anyone can claim it back?

It's starting to worry us and we can't contact the solicitor today.

Davesnave

I understand that you have to have had a fence around it or have used it continuously for a period of 12 years before you can claim ownership through unchallenged established use (or whatever the phrase is.) However, I'm no lawyer and if this is wrong I'm sure someone will be along soon to correct that!

For an access to become a right of way, I'm fairly sure it's 20 years of provable, unimpeded use.

kj*daisy

It's called adverse possession and as far as I know it is 12 years, but the rules are a bit complicated buyt your solicitor should be able to advise you properly.

haylibo

I thought the rules had changed so that the previous owner had a longer time frame in which to claim back the land but don't know any more than that.

Debt_Free_Chick

Here are the Land Registry Guides on the Adverse Possession process if the land is registered and alternatively if the land is not registered

russbeck

Adverse possession,thats what she called it. Thanks to everyone. Were going to have a good read up about it and speak to the solicitor later. Thanks again for all the replies.

Poppy9

We had a similar issue when we bought our house. The land at the back of our garden belonged to the council. They sold it to us for £500 plus their legal costs & ours of about £500.

russbeck

We have spoken to our solicitor and she says that nothing can be done by her or our mortgage company until the plans sent from the sellers solicitor. Then they can see what's what. She said she has asked for them twice in the last 2 weeks and will ask again tomorrow. Do you think we should do some chasing too because this seems like a long time. My husband is also starting to go off the house and I'm having trouble keeping him interested in it.:(

BlondeHeadOn

The other thing to find out about is who the 'borrowed' land does belong to. When we bought our current house we had the same problem, and the vendors kept saying that it was okay because they had lived in the house with these boundaries for 23 years. Our solicitor said not so, and held up the sale until he could find out more about the land (quite a big slice of garden, about 100' by 15' ish)

Turned out that the owners of the land was the original building/contracting company for the estate, and they were still in business. Our solicitor contacted them, and they said the land could become legally part of the garden only if the current vendor bought the land. Boy, did this cause a lot of problems! In the end the vendor bought the strip of land for £2,000, and had the deeds made up in our name - only then would we exchange contracts.

So it may not just depend on how long the land has been undisputed...

Worth it though in the end - we have a lovely big garden!!!