Land dispute!! Cheeky offer?!

I thought adverse possession laws were changed /removed a few years ago? I think you can still have the 20 year rule for unimpeded access but not ownership. Happy to be corrected though

Personally I wouldn't be selling it, it's tempting to go after a few quid now, but having it to square off your plot and give a view will doubtless add more to the value of your property than the land value.

I would be looking to have a value for the land and a value for your entire property with and without the land, see what makes sense.

If you have a mortgage your lender has a fist order charge on the land registry, so you can't sell it without consent, and they would be looking for market value at least.

If you do decide to sell, the buyer re-emburses all your valuation fees and pays all legal fees.

I renovate and flip property for a living, thats how it works when you want a bit of someone else patch that wasn't on the market, you cover all the costs, and they set the price - if its too high you walk.

They have no rights here, its yours, not theirs, their buyer dropping out isn't your problem, thats property dealing!!

@NewHere77 I think I'd be unwilling to sell it at all. It makes the back part of your garden so much wider and more in line with the rest of the boundary line.

It certainly is worth a lot more than a measly 200 pounds. More like 25K. But, like I said, it enhances your house and garden and gives you room toward the back and a wider, more expansive view. I wouldn't sell for any amount, but that's me.

Your neighbor is quite the CF! I think she figures you can be snowed to give it up. Don't let her run you over like that.

Your garden is a similar shape to mine and my next door neighbours - mine is the one on the right like yours so I’m not your neighbour 😂with long gardens that are an odd shape I think neighbours do informally change boundaries/ give parts of garden away. I have the opposite issue to to - I have a small piece of my neighbours land in my boundary (as the previous owners daughter lived in the house that backs into us and having that bit of land allowed them to out a gate connecting the two gardens). My neighbours have said that I can keep it but I don’t intend to. I want to put in a new fence and hedges and I know that when my neighbours house sells in the future the future buyers will want that piece of land as it is legally theirs. The about doesn’t help you but it does show how these things happen.

as pp have said you need legal advice and you absolutely cannot accept the money. Whoever owns the boundary needs to reinstate it to as it appears on the deeds. In my case I own the boundary to the left so you might too. A quick way to resolve this is if it’s your boundary get a cheap fence up (your neighbour will be furious though!).

At what price would he want to sell. Surely not £200.

Average in this case is meaningless. An acre of woodland is vastly different from an acre on the St George's Hill Estate. One will be worth very little per acre. The other is worth a few million.

Happened to my sister. She found out she owned far more of the neighbouring garden than she realised - most of it and all the parking space.

How had this not been noticed? Poor conveyancing by various solicitors for both properties over the years.

Neighbouring house is a buy to let. She decided not to sell, but to grant permission via solicitor’s letter.

When she was in talks the price was for the land, and its effect on neighbouring houses’s value + all legal fees. Far more than the OP’s £200.

I used to work in property and land management and had a very similar case to this. The encroaching party had moved their fence and built a shed on the land which belonged to the government. I instructed our land agent to give them notice to move the fence to the correct boundary and they refused, claiming adverse possession. We also wrote to the Estate Agent and sent a copy of the title and instructed them to remove the land from the advert for sale. We then took the encroaching party to court. They turned up in court to fight the case. The judge said that it was clear that they did not own the land & did not qualify for adverse possession & gave them 24 hours to move the shed and the fence. He awarded us full legal costs too. They claimed that they were broke so our solicitor put a charge on their title deeds. This meant that ten months later when they sold their house, their solicitor had to pay us the legal costs from the proceeds of the sale before they could complete.

How can you sell off part of the title deed that is mortgaged?

You can’t. Your mortgage co lent you money for the whole property and hold the deeds until your mortgage is paid off.

You can’t just sell bits.

Agree with the others get legal advice and go from there! Definitely should reclaim it too!

Buying additional garden can be as much as £1000 per meter, that was what the owner of the field at the back of us was quoting.

30 grand OP: https://www.purplebricks.co.uk/moving-guides/how-to-value-garden-land#:~:text=The%20price%20of%20land%20per,coming%20in%20at%20£1%2C526.

Well no. Get a land referencer if you want it evaluated but it's not £200. Piss taker.

There is NO way I'd sell.
I'd reclaim the land and reinstate the boundary. And I would do that now irrespective of whether you eventually do sell or not.

If you do sell I would be looking to sell at a premium over and above it's value.
Views add thousands to houses.
Eg if value is £5k I'd be looking for £10-15k

Absolutely outrageously cheeky! Fight her all the way. Good luck and keep us updated!

Have a look on the sales page for her house, has it specifically been photographed or mentioned on there? If so I'd call the estate agent and let them know that they shouldn't really be selling part of your property on their website and to get it taken down and corrected.

So what if the buyer falls through? Not your problem. What you don't want is someone buying, putting a new fence up and having to go through the process of reclaiming back your land.

She has admitted it isn't hers by making an offer to have it transferred. So keep that evidence and the threats she is making.

Id be getting a cease and desist or equivalent 'you can't sell my land' letter to her asap next week.

Ha, so cheeky! If she could claim adverse possession she wouldn’t have been asking you to sign it over or offering to pay something for it.

re-establish your boundary and yes I would look back over the conveyancing of your purchase - I know we had boundary conversations with our purchase.

I would have been open to negotion up to the point that she threatened to go to court - at that point i would have informed her the price was one million pounds and a cadbury creme egg, given her a large hearty belly laugh and told her to instruct her solicitor.
Entitled dunderhead.

This. You MUST get access to the land ASAP to break their claim of exclusive use. The threat of an adverse possession claim is then dead in the water and you can negotiate sale on your own terms if you want to. Or not.

Point out to your partner that you can't sell it unless your mortgage provider agrees.

FGS don’t sell and especially not for that spectacularly piss-taking offer!! Your garden will be a much better shape in the original rectangular format. Plus do look into what pp’s are saying about the whole mortgage thing - the entire situation may not even be up for discussion!

The land belongs to the house you bought. It's yours. End off.

Untrue. The law changed a fair while ago to disallow adverse possession claims. The only way the neighbour could claim the land is if she registered a claim and after following an lengthy procedure, the owner didn’t dispute. This doesn’t appear to have happened.

If they're saying the land is only worth £200 then it shouldn't effect their sale much... They can knock £200 off for the buyers.

I wouldn't even give a counter offer, but make sure I was clearing the area asap and effecting a solid fence at the boundary.
If you are going to offer then start at £50k and don't go lower than £30k. If it's effecting their house sale then it's worth far more to them than you currently, so they'll have to consider that. Tell them you've had it valued.
If you sell, then also take into consideration that losing it will bring the value of your house down and potentially make it harder to sell.

I would not sell but would clear the land and fence the land within your garden.

Sell and anything could happen. The new owners could put a simmer house there, or a trampoline, something that gives you a horrible view, anything.

Your garden will be much better in it’s proper rectangular shape.