To think if you buy a house with a garden, then the least your solicitor should do is check you actually OWN the garden (Be warned!)

[Utterlyastoundedmum]

So that's it really!

We're nearly at point of exchanging on our sale and related purchase and had the news ( from our buyers solicitor) that somehow we don't legally own our garden, never have! It should have been picked up by our conveyancing solicitor 5 years ago but it wasn't. They are denying all responsibility and say it is our fault for not telling them

So now we have a house we cannot sell, unless our neighbour agrees to ' 'sell' us the land even though they have no idea they legally own it and it has never been 'theirs' in terms of usage.

So, be warned!!

There is a regulation authority that you can complain to about your solicitors misconduct. Which tbh sounds like this is gross incompetence on their part for not checking the land registry properly!

How many years has 'your' garden 'belonged' to your house?
Have you told your neibough about the garden?

Thanks soured, we intend to make a formal complaint once we have sorted this big mess out.

They are saying that as they sent us a copy of the land registry plan (which we have no record of and they admit they had no response to ) then it was up to us to tell them the house plan and LR deed did not match.

The thing is the 'shape' of the land is very similar to the overall house shape anyhow, (it's a very small garden) and so it takes someone who actually understands LR plans and maybe scaling to actually realise the implications.

Just can't believe how utterly callous and inhuman they are being about it all!!

If ghetto garden has been used by your house for a number of years you may have rights over it. Someone who knows about this sort of thing may be along soon

Can you prove via the previous owners of your house that the garden has been for your sole use for 20 years or more? If so you have rights over it. If not then you must pursue your former conveyances for negligence.

Do you have a mortgage on the property? If so was it valued with garden as part of it? If it was then the valuation report can be used as evidence against your former conveyancer. They will have acted for you and on behalf of your bank so have liabilities towards you and bank.

I will come back later and make more sense once DC are in bed...

Hi Fluffy and Mrsflorrick

Well as far as we know the garden has always been part of the house. The elderly lady who we purchased the house from has sadly since died but all the 'evidence' suggests this is the case. The lady lived here for nearly sixty years although obviously it will not be possible to gain a statement from her to this effect.

Yes we have a mortgage.

I just feel that of someone has said, "well looking at your house particulars and the LR plans you may want to double check measurements" or however a solicitor would phrase it, then we would have done it like a shot! I mean this is exactly what our buyers solicitor has done!

On top of that we now know that buildings and gardens should be denoted by separate black lines, we were unaware of this at the time but are painfully aware now! Again surely the solicitor should have picked up on this!?

Do you still happen to have a copy of the sales particulars from the estate agents? If so that will help or if you can obtain them. Search on Internet.
Some agents leave them on there and you can still view them years later.

Also conveyancers/sols get a copy of sales particular and valuation reports (the latter when a mortgage is involved). This should have told them there was a problem.

If the previous owner lived there for 60 years and used this garden as her then you should have rights over it. Howver it comes down to proving it has been "your garden" for all this time.

Did the old lady have family you know of and if so do they have old family photos showing the garden being used and would they sign an sworn affidavit to that effect?

Difficult situation for you.

Whatever you do. Until you have gathered more evidence Do Not let your neighbour know of any of this!!

Do your neighbours technically own your garden? What are they like? If my neighbours suddenly told me that I owned their garden, despite the fact it had been used by them (and previous occupants) for decades, there's no way I'd demand money for it or expect to use it. I'd simply sign it over to them. Do they know about this?

Normally you will have been sent a report on title when you got the contract to sign. This should refer to the land registry entries and the plan. The report on title could be a separate document, or in the form of a letter from the solicitors. You could also check the Property information forms, which might make reference to a garden ( or absence of). What did the estate agents particulars say?
If you returned the signed contract and the mortgage documents to the solicitor, then that would imply you also received anything else in the same package.
Can they provide a copy of the letter sending you the plan? Or of the report on title?
As Mrs Florrick says, if the valuation referred to a garden and the land registry plan didn't, then this should have been disclosed to you and to the lender ( who would probably have then revalued, or written a letter saying it didn't affect the value). Either way you should have been informed that this was an issue.
However, if the valuation didn't refer to a garden, then how would the solicitors have known you thought there was one, unless it was flagged up in some other way?
Many years ago it was considered good practice to meet a buyer and go through the paperwork in person together, but if you bought within the last 5 years, then it would probably have all been done by post, ( so a paper trail should be easier to find).

I'm a Licenses Conveyancer UAM, I'll see if I can help.

When I act in the purchase of a property, the seller's solicitors send a plan to me of the current Land Registry entries and a plan, which I then take a copy of and forward to my clients, the buyers. I outline the entire property boundary (so ecompassing land and buildings) in red for ease of identification.

If your solicitors have in fact sent you the plan they received in good faith from the vendor's solicitors and heard nothing to the contrary from you then it may well be that you can seek recompense from the vendor's solicitors - still with me?

I'm a touch confused as to the "separate black lines" thing you mention - who has told you this? Any parcel of land in the same title number will be outlined by one single line, a second outlined parcel of land would suggest to me a second title number, obviously this is without seeing the plan.

You are at a slight impass because - if the land belongs to your neighbours then technically it does belong to them, and they are within their rights to ask for recompense for it. Havign said that, if they purchased after you, you have a strong case for stating they didn't purchase their property with the ownership of the land and therefore may be able to press for a transfer to you for no funds

HTH a little

Thank you aunty and lady for your posts I'm in tears now that you have been kind enough to take the time to try to help!
To be honest we are confused, my DP is making himself I'll over all this and is really worried we are "racking up thousands" trying to make sense of it.
Our current solicitor has been helpful and is easy to talk to, I trust him but of course he will need to be paid for trying to unpick all of this.

The thing I meant about the black lines is that when you look at the LR plan of our street you can clearly see that the gardens are marked separately, ie the buildings are shown then the 'parcel' of land that it the garden is also shown but ith separate lines.

That contrasts with our house ( and what we thought was garden) which is just one ' shape' probably not making much sense am I!

Right I'm with you UAM. Does your garden back onto your house directly? As in does your garden touch your house?

Again without looking at a plan my first assumption would be that at sometime the parcel of land that went with your house actually got bought by next door. However long ago. Do you know if the parcels of land are under different Title Numbers?

I really think the first port of call would be asking your solicitors now to request your purchase file from your old solicitors (they'll need your signature for this).

I think any recourse you may have would be from the solicitors acting for the old lady you bought from, after all - and I know this sounds totally callous - there is absolutely no way a solicitor can know whether what he/she is seeing on paper actually corresponds to the house you're buying UNLESS you tell them otherwise - the days of solicitors visiting properties are long gone I'm afraid.

I presume that when you bought the house the estate agents had valued it on the full site, so it may be that you can take some advice in this regard - obviously you have paid for something you don't own and have been, pretty much, mislead by the last vendor.

Unless of course THEY didn't know they didn't own it and this has gone on for years. Very difficult, I really feel for you

from someone else who has had a house nightmare.
Eventually your mind adjusts to the new reality.

Hi Lady

Well our house does back directly to our house.

In theory most other houses on our road back onto a very pretty river, ours and one or two others don't.

We have always assumed that at sme point the Old lady or her predecessors must have sold off 'most' of the garden leaving just a small area of about 10 x 5 square metres which fouls be used to hang washing, access manhole, the house next door is very big and it would make sense for them to have had ( I am talking historically) much more money to enable them to purchase and maintain the land.

However, if this is the case then the 'remaining' ( ie our) garden was not clearly or separately marked on the LR, for whatever reason.

I believe this is the most likely reason as it seems implausible to have back door and two windows looking out over someone else's garden ( they would surely hate it too!) and also access to mains supplies and manhole just outside your back door but in next doors garden ( I know this does happen but it just seems so implausible that this would have been the set up deliberately)

Thanks again

Sorry should have said our house does back directly onto our garden!!!

a kittens thanks! What was your house nightmare!?

UAM - yup total madness, but more regular than you think, especially when more and more houses spring up and bits of garden have to be found anywhere they can. This seems to be plausible given you mentioning the larger house.

I really hope you get it sorted without too much hassle.

you still have a copy of the surveyors report? The you get in contact and ask them why this was not told to you when you had the survey done - they cost £400 odd quid back in 1997 so they are not cheap now take it up with them to sort out for you.

OP are you the same OP as this thread with a changed name or is this thing happening regularly to MNers?

Its probably fairly easily sorted with a bit of digging around. when we bought our house we had to spend a fair bit of time convincing our solicitor that the bit at the end of the garden wasn't going to be ours and had infact been sold off by the previous owner, and was now a separate piece of land complete with someone else's bungalow.

The mix up was partly because the house is very old, and the lady living here before had been here forever, so it wasn't actually officially registered on the land registry. This may be what has happened with your neighbouring property. Luckily we have the details regarding our predecessor selling off the end of the garden so it was easily sorted out.

I think if you can show you have made continuous use of a piece of land for a certain amount od time (??10 years) you can Claim some sort of adverse possession, but it's probably worth just asking you neighbour if they have any additional paperwork.