Selling a house with a garden bigger than showing on land registry?

[HedgeOwl]

We live on a new build, the neighbours want to extend their garden into a patch of wasteland, we have to do so too for it to not look obvious. Land is managed by a big company. Currently it’s just wasteland by a hedge and will always remain so.
If we do move the fence the garden will obviously be bigger than what the deeds show, which is fine now, but when we come to sell this will be an issue won’t it? We’ll either have to shrink the garden or we’re not going to be able to sell.

I think this is actually more common than the comments above imply. It absolutely is. DH often works on railways and often laughs with the Railtrack watcher as he takes pictures of back gardens that have snuck out onto the land between garden and railway! In January they found a whole guest block at the end of a garden. All snuck out of the railway buffer land. The Railtrack bloke was a bit gobsmacked. He had to report it and there would have been a very expensive 'putting right' for the house owner! Bloody dangerous as well as stupid. Buffer land is there for a reason!

Why not contact the owner and ask if they'd sell the land to you?

The land will be owned by an entity and if you encroaching it that is trespass.

Some friends of mine bought a house where the garden had once backed into some allotments that fell into disuse. Gradually all the householders in the road moved their fences to extend their gardens. Luckily friends were always aware of this and just used it as extra space, as eventually the land owner died and the beneficiary sold the land for redevelopment and reclaimed it. Some of the neighbours had built garden offices, pizza ovens, prayer rooms and the like on the occupied land and they lost the lot. (The law which used to provide if you occupied land for 12 years then it became yours has changed.)

Squatters' rights, the 12 year rule thing does still exist

www.gov.uk/squatting-law/squatters-rights-to-property

@AmberRoseGold

I think this is actually more common than the comments above imply. We are currently having issues with neighbours at the back starting to take over a communal lane. We are the only ones who need to drive up the lane and have to remind them that we need turning room etc.. It is really stressful and when I asked the local councillor he said it could be a costly legal fight. So I don’t think it is morally right but I do think it is possible.

This happened with a house just down the road. The row of 4 had a public access alley at back and side (all the terraced rows do here). A local builder bought the end house, very cheap in an estate sale, modernised it (badly ) and fenced the alley off. This gives a decent sized garden area behind and parking for 2 cars at the side. I rang the council and they couldn’t have been less interested. (I also know somebody who lives on a housing estate where their street backed on to a large area of unused rough land. They and all their neighbours extended their gardens into the land - more than doubling existing gardens iirc - but when, much later, the land was built on, either the builders didn’t measure very carefully or they’d had it long enough to legally keep it 🤷🏼‍♀️) Purple outlines show land grabs. It’s not impossible, even if it should be!

@HedgeOwl

We live on a new build, the neighbours want to extend their garden into a patch of wasteland, we have to do so too for it to not look obvious. Land is managed by a big company. Currently it’s just wasteland by a hedge and will always remain so. If we do move the fence the garden will obviously be bigger than what the deeds show, which is fine now, but when we come to sell this will be an issue won’t it? We’ll either have to shrink the garden or we’re not going to be able to sell.

Approach the owner of the land and see if you can buy it. Don't tell the neighbour what you're doing. Buy the land if you can, then sell your neighbour a bit of it for a profit or keep the land for yourselves if you think that having a bigger garden will add value to your property.

You can't just extend your garden onto someone else's land (because it will be someone else's land). It will make it almost impossible for you to sell the place at a decent asking price if there's a boundary dispute issue hanging over the place.

reading the gov.uk government the previous owners can object & you have to go thru a legal process first to claim this

www.land-registry-documents.co.uk/news-blog/claiming-adverse-possession-of-land/

Since the Land Registration Act 2002, if the land is registered then you can only get adverse possession (after 10 years rather than 12) if you serve notice on the owner and they don't object. Let's face it, most owners will object.

The old 12 year system (which didn't require notice to be served so caught out many landowners) still applies for unregistered land (which is fairly rare) and where the occupation commenced before 13 October 2003.

I am a solicitor (not property but know my way around the basics of this as my friends mentioned above asked me for my help).

You can’t do this you berk

I love the word berk.

I was always under the impression that if you use land that isn't yours for a number of years and the legal owner doesn't challenge you throughout that time then you can legally make a claim of ownership, at a cost of course.

Our old neighbours did this, not a new build. There was a triangle of scrap land at the end of both of our gardens. They used it to park their car, and after 12 years of no one else asking about it, they added it to their garden. If we'd owned our house at that time, I think we might have done the same.

As others have said, it’s theft. If you’re bothered about having more space then put a gate and let your kids play on it (if that’s even allowed).

My parents did something similar on land they owned (extended the garden into the field) which meant that part of the garden was agricultural land not residential. All the time they lived there it wasn't a problem but it made the sale tricky. Essentially the deeds would need to be altered if ever anyone wanted to sell the property individually. I would definitely try to identify the owners and buy it off them, because it almost certainly belongs to someone.

honeylulu has given an accurate summary of the legal position and process.
You could do a map search on the Land Registry website to discover if the land is registered, and if so who it belongs to.

It may cause you more trouble than it's worth, and may be morally questionable. Otoh, the numerous assertions that it will cause you problems when you come to sell are not really on the money; ime, the reverse is true- many boundary issues arise precisely because buyers don't look carefully enough at whether the tiny sketch map supplied with the deeds actually matches what's there on the ground. Unless it's a big change, potential buyers may well simply not notice.

This doesn't of course justify it or make it a good idea.

That’s trespass and you’re right you can’t sell your property with a garden that extends beyond the boundaries on the title register.

So you want to steal land? I've got a big field at the of my garden, I might steal it and turn my garden from 'not very big' to the size of Wembley.

Yes, of course, it will cause issues when you come to sell. If nothing else, it will put off potential buyers, never mind that it isn't an accurate representation of the property they are buying. We looked at a house over the weekend, where the neighbour's boundary line actually extended to about a metre inside the hedge that bordered the lane between the two properties. Somehow, this had been incorporated into the garden over the previous 200 years or so. But it was off putting because means that technically the neighbour could at any point take out the hedge and extend the lane into what would have been 'our' garden (but not really our garden). We gave it a pass. Too much hassle.

"the reverse is true- many boundary issues arise precisely because buyers don't look carefully enough at whether the tiny sketch map supplied with the deeds actually matches what's there on the ground. Unless it's a big change, potential buyers may well simply not notice."

My relatively recent experience of buying and selling is the reverse of this. Our solicitor picked up on tiny boundary differences on property we were buying and, as I mentioned up thread, the boundary difference in property I was selling was also picked up.

It's very very easy to do so these days with current technology.

The land is owned by someone 99% of the time. Check up with land registry and approach to purchase!

When I bought my new build almost 5 years ago there was a corridor behind the garden which is for wildlife. Its lovely, full of wild flowers, some gorgeous shrubs, and it means I have a totally unobscured view of the countryside behind us. It was a selling point for the house.

However when I moved in the old chap in the house behind me decided it was wasteland, moved his boundary, started putting hedges up and fixing wires to my fence, and moved his shed into the space. I asked the developer why he was allowed to do that when they were charging me a management fee to maintain it and within weeks he'd been slapped with a threat of legal action if he didn't give the land back and move his stuff off my fence.

Most new build estates now have wildlife corridors like mine. Its not a good idea to take this land at all. As soon as the maintenance company comes out you'll be in bother with the developer.

That link upthread is not to the actual Land Registry website. Adverse possession of land is very commonplace, but can be difficult to prove. It's only worth fencing this land in if there is nothing in the title register or planning permission, etc stating it must be preserved as a wildlife corridor, etc. If it's registered land, if you've been in possession of it for 10 years you can apply to the Land Registry to have it registered to you, providing of course the registered owner hasn't either told you to take down your fence or otherwise asserted their ownership, e.g. by granting a licence or lease for you to use the land.

Err, it's called stealing. You can't just annexe someone else's land! Let your neighbours do it if they must, but don't get dragged into it.

Have you checked to see who owns the wasteland? Why not try contacting them about buying a bit?

@userxx

You can’t do this you berk

I love the word berk.

You know it is rhyming slang?

Berk . Berkshire hunt.