Road type change after exchange

cpw86 wrote: »

Hello,

We are FTB, and have exchanged on a new build shared ownership house from Bovis in Sept 2018.

On the plans sent to us by our conveyencer, the road our house is on is noted as 'Estate roads'. On the plans, the only area highlighted as relating to our plot is the house, front garden, garage, driveway and garden. There are no markings on the road that would indicate we have any responsibility for upkeep. Additionally, we have always been told right from when we first enquired, that all roads will be adopted by the council. This plan has been signed by us and we have exchanged on this basis.

As it happens, a member of my family is actually buying the plot next door, on the same road, but has only just started the legal side of things.

My family member received their plans 5 days ago, and this road is now marked as a shared driveway (including the area outside of my plot). Also, on their plan they also have a box outlined in red around the portion of road outside their house.

Having queried this with the sales office, they had not even seen the new plan and were completely unaware of the change. However, they have since confirmed it has indeed changed. We have not yet been officially notified of this change.

Couple of extra things to note:
- In my contract it states Bovis can make changes so long as it does not affect the amount or space or property value.
- In the deeds, it states that IF there is any managed land, we must pay our fair share
- Our plot is at the very start of this road so one of our worries is that this part of the road will get the most wear and tear.
- There is a large park and field opposite our plot, so another worry is people will be parking along side our road to access it, increasing wear and tear on the road.
- There aren't really any other shared ownership properties in the area, so I don't want to pull out.
- I cannot afford a non shared ownership property due the size of property required and my current income.

I will be contacting my conveyencer early this week regarding the matter. However in the mean time:

a) Can they make this change without breaking the contract?
b) Does anyone have any experience with living with a shared driveway?
c) Could I potentially use this to negotiate extras? If so, is this done via conveyencer or sales office?
d) Any other advice/opinions welcomed.

Thanks in advance.

You should speak to your solicitor urgently about this.

The contract should explain what you are buying.
I am concerned about the rather open-ended term you say states "Bovis can make changes so long as it does not affect the amount or space or property value."
I have never seen such an open ended term I would suggest is extremely in favour of the seller. At the very least, tyhe solicitor should have highlighted this to you before exchange, and explained the possible consequences of accepting it
(But I accept it's very hard to shift a large builder from the terms of their contract)

An unadopted road will, in many cases, adversely affect the value of any property that relies upon it for access (compared to it being adopted or planned to be adopted with appropriate safegaurds in place to ensure it will be one day)

As for the adopted road, if that is what was promised, that is what you should expect. The solicitor should have investigated what safegaurds were in place to ensure the road was adopted at a later stage, if that was proposed but not yet done. The solicitor should have then explained what that safeguard was to you, so that you could sleep easy that the road would be adopted ... one day.

In my opinion, you don't want to 'trade' this for any thing else. Not only does an adopted road mean the council will have to take care of it forever, but more importantly it will need to be built to the council's demanding standards. In addition the services that run undertneath (sewers etc) will also need to be adopted by the appropraite authority - else you will be responsible for their upkeep.
Any streetlighting you will have to pay for repair, upkeep and even the electricity used, unless adopted.

If roads are not adopted, expect them to turn out like this (as no one can afford to repair them)


In fact, in that area (Jaywick) I understand that after years of arguing, many of the roads have now been re-surfaced at a cost of £5million

It took many years, and I suggest this is the exception rather than the rule. The roads were so bad that buses, and even emergency services were refusing to travel along them as doing so caused damage to vehicles.

A different road, but how some look today



But I know of other, more affluent areas, where unadopted roads are as bad if not worse, and there is no chance at present of anyone repairing them.

I'm also aware of places where the roads have not been adopted for about 20 years, despite them supposed to have been. But the safegaurd is that there is a pot of money elsewhere, ringfenced, to ensure the roads will eventaully be adopted.

In tjhe meantime, the builder has to sweep the roads himself, pay for the street electricity, and maintain the roads generally.
They have changed the streetlights 3 times now. Initially they installed traditional sodium lights. Then on an attempt to secure adoption, the council insisted on low energy bulbs. Since then the builder has had to install LED streetlights, as that is what the council demand.
Also, the builder has to continually change any damaged to kerbstones, etc, as the council will only accept a 'pergect' road on adoption.

Meanwhile, the residents have all had a rebate of their surface water fees, since none of the water passes directly into a sewerage company sewer - as the sewerage company has not adopted the sewers whilst the roads are not adopted by the council.

Fortunately, the builder is still on site, still expanding the development (almost into a small town of it's own now), so there is still hope the builder will secure the sdoption of the roads. Otherwise, they'll have to call in the reserve pot, find another builder, and get the roads adopted that way.

Cakeguts wrote: »

I think you will find that the adopted roads are roads that anyone on the estate needs to drive over to access their property. If the road outside your property isn't a road that everyone would need to drive over then it is a shared access.

The OP said:

- Our plot is at the very start of this road so one of our worries is that this part of the road will get the most wear and tear.
- There is a large park and field opposite our plot, so another worry is people will be parking along side our road to access it, increasing wear and tear on the road.

So it sounds like quite a few people will need to use this road.

As for parking, if it's a private road, then you can restrict parking to those that own the road (or anyone they so permit, such as visitors)

But how you enforce it is another question. There's a whole bunch of people on the parking board who think anyone can park on other peoples private land as they feel fit...:cool:

Search the forum for 'shared drive' or 'shared driveway'. Most of us wouldn't touch them with a bargepole. Although it's worse when the shared bit runs between the houses. Might not be quite so bad with a shared space at the front.


Trouble is, there's always some people who think rules don't apply to them. Even in my home with a double space at the front, my bloody next door neighbour's parents sometimes park their car across the empty bit until the space outside the son's house becomes free. They don't usually tell us they've done this until the dad has had a ten minute chat with my OH over the fence, then just drops into conversation saying 'oh, by the way, we've had to park outside briefly until a space turns up'. Grrr. They've more or less moved in for the last 3 months or so as the son's been ill. I don't care if I don't often use one side of my drive - I don't want anyone parking outside it (plus it's on a parking website so who knows when someone might turn up!).


Neither of us want to cause an issue so at the moment have ignored it. If it was a shared driveway, I should imagine it happens more often, especially if one side has more than one car and lots of visitors. If one has no car, I expect it could cause even bigger future probs!

Get on the planning portal and see what has been approved for the site and keep a close eye on it.


Developer will be making changes and not telling people.