Land dispute!! Cheeky offer?!

Why does everyone keep saying the solicitors should have noticed? You do understand that solicitors don’t inspect the property? The solicitor sends their client the title plans, it’s for the client to flag if the boundaries look wrong

OP if you want to spend money, do not spend it on a surveyor. Spend it on a solicitor to write a letter which say "thank you for the offer, my clients decline your offer and do not wish to sell. In NN days they will be reinstating a fence on the correct boundary, therefore if you have any plants or fixtures you have in the area please move them.

Secondly spend the money on a professional fencing company to reinstate the boundar. You need not do anymore. The more you engage the more this will become a problem.

Get yourself a blanket and have a picnic there! I’d ask to see the value difference with the land vs without the land. I’d then expect that as payment.

£200 a fair price?? 😂 Add at least an extra 0 on there and times by 5.

You clearly have no experience in this area do you? Either that or your the greedy neighbour. 🤔

We paid 20k to our neighbours around 10yrs ago to remove their right of way over our drive (they had another access point to their field). Land is the most expensive bit of a house purchase, not the bricks and mortar building.

I think we will need to bite the bullet and pay for a survey

I wouldn't be paying for a survey until you speak to your mortgage company (for free) to find out what is involved in selling and you are very keen to sell.

I would also investigate getting the neighbour to pay upfront for your survey to determine the value as they are ones who want to buy it. There is no point spending £500 on survey if they are not interested if it comes back as £5k-£10k or even more. Them paying for the survey shows their commitment. You could perhaps say you will refund half the survey costs if they go ahead with the purchase.

If you can put in a fence I'd do it straight away. You can prove it's your bit. If anyone's used it differently, previous owners etc, it's presumably because they didn't know, it was somehow sneakily done.

A gesture of goodwill? Offering a tiny fraction of the value of the land (if the experience of myself and others is anything to go by). Not what I'd call goodwill. More what I'd call CF-ery
If they want to sell, it's easy. They put in a fence where the actual boundary is, and sell only the land they actually own. Sorted.
Nah, this is the neighbour trying to take advantage - big time.

Can I refer you to my previous post. Since we are dealing with adjoining plots of land, if the neighbours and previous owners of the neighbouring property have been in possession of the land for 10 years and reasonably believed the land was theirs, they may have a claim for adverse possession.

You need a solicitor to tell you how to enforce your rights, and a land valuer to tell you what it's worth. This is one for the professionals.

A friend of mine sold a piece of her already small city garden to a neighbour. I don't know how much she got for it but she very much regretted selling as he built a garage on it which blocked her outlook.

Don't sell unless you really have to.

Just for reference- We had a 2m x 9m strip of land that we sold to our neighbours as it would give them rear access. We sold it for £4k 2020. The value that it adds to their house is far more than £4k.

And guilt is definitely something women excel at.

Whether OP knew about the land before or not is not a reason to give it away.

I wonder if neighbour has taken legal advice about adverse possesion or has looked it up and is spouting rubbish hoping that OP will just agree.

To the previous poster who claimed their neighbours land and profited from selling it you must be so proud of yourself.

It's not the neighbour's land. It's yours.

I'd make it clear you won't be giving it away, and you may not be open to selling it at all, and certainly not for the cost of solicitor fees.

YANBU

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I bought a house where 1/4 of the garden was technically owned by a neighbour but in practicality was fenced off and used as though it belonged to the property I was buying.

The neighbour who owned it had bought land to build a house and then not included a section when it came to the practicalities of putting up their fencing.

There was a time limit on it. When I bought it there was 5 years left for the original owner to stake their claim. It expired in my ownership and I later sold the property with the land now unequivocally included.

It was all very amicable (I'd asked the neighbours before I bought if they were interested in the land, they were not) and uneventful with no cash changing hands.

Personally I think some people suggesting larger sums of money here might be unrealistic. You aren't being asked to sell land in use that is currently incorporated into your physical boundary. You're being asked to sign away a legal technicality to make it easier for your neighbour to sell their property (presumably before your right to claim it expires) and you've been offered a goodwill gesture. My guess is that if you say no, you'll not only risk their sale but you'll also have the responsibility to correct and make good all the boundaries asap.

You've been offered a gesture of goodwill for something you weren't aware of or were using. Is there good reason to make everyone's life harder?

They are hoping on selling their house for a higher price, thinking they can offer you £200 quid for stealing your land.

I'll buy it for £250

The law changes surrounding adverse possession make it very very hard now. This case wouldn't even make it to the case little as the OP says no one has lived there very long.

We purchased a patch of land attached to our garden - it has god knows how many restrictions on it (you can do nothing with it but use it as a garden) it was £20K. They are pulling a fast one OP. Seek immediate legal advice.

£200 is taking the mick. We bought an acre of land next to our existing garden which was grazing pasture 3 yrs ago. The seller wanted £20,000 for it.
I had some estate agents come out and value our property as it was and then re-value with the attached 1 acre land. The value of our property increased by £100-200K dependant on how landscaped it was so we purchased the land for £20K. Can you do similar?

No idea if she understands the value or not.

Not CF because you can simply reject it.

Talk to your solicitor or estate agent about whether to simply reject or to make a counter offer.

£200? They are taking the piss.Erect a fence to mark your boundary.

I hear lots of posts about taking back the land at the earliest convenience but we are also trying to manage neighbourly relations and makes it a bit more difficult that we are a semi. I need to think on this one.
Really I wouldn't worry too much about this, make sure you do the right thing for yourselves, these people are selling their house due to a breakup, you likely won't even know them in 12 months' time.

If they start being dicks they'll have to disclose an ongoing neighbour dispute as well when they sell the house (and if they do get snippy, you can use that as leverage to get them to behave themselves as what they want most in the world right now is to sell their house for enough money to buy something new for each of them).

I really think you should move the fence if you can, so there's no confusion or ambiguity for prospective buyers as they're the people you want to get on with in the future.

Additionally, given that they have been using your land for free for all this time there's the possibility (if you want to be exceptionally awkward and pedantic) that they could owe you X years of rent on the land of yours that they have been using. I'm not suggesting you actually charge them this but it's another argument to keep in your bag of tools to get this resolved fairly if they start coming out with rubbish about adverse possession again.

I agree @DeeLusional - I meant that they might be making it up to make OP feel guilty.