Neighbour wants me to give up private right of way if I sell house

[Ric2013]

Hi there,

Wondered if anyone has any ideas that might be helpful to me with regard to my right of access through my neighbour's garden which, since I may be selling, my neighbour would like me to relinquish.

I'm considering selling my house. Recently this has been rented out and I've been renting a pad on the other side of the country (but I'm fed up of travelling back and forth to do maintenance while having to put up with my own landlord's somewhat bizarre idea of what constitutes maintaining a house... but I digress).

The back garden of my own centre-terraced house has access to the road via the garden of the neighbouring house which is end-of-terrace, with a very clearly defined (on paper, if not on the ground) path through the garden around its outer perimeter. This is all documented as a formal easement.

The neighbour (she's had her house almost as long as I have, nearly ten years) had a bad experience with a former tenant of my house who used the premise of a right of way as an excuse for standing in her garden and making phone calls for some reason (why she didn't just ask him to s-d off is beyond me, and I was unaware of the situation) and is now a bit scared that, since I'm thinking of selling, the new owner of my house might be equally difficult.

Personally I don't see why the access is a particular problem, as she can always fence around the access route, thus making her garden seem smaller if she really wants to worry about it, but I'd like to help her out if possible.

She seems to think a simple exchange of letters would extinguish the right, but I can't see how that can be, seeing as this right is on Land Registry, and is some 50 years old. Obviously if there are legal costs involved, I'll tell the neighbour she needs to pay them if she wants this done. And we're assuming that there are no planning issues involved - I wonder whether having a 15' back garden without access to the road could be considered a hazard in that there would be no fire escape?

There is a part of me that would be sad to see this go as I thought it was a good thing for the house to have, and actually I feel that sharing a space adds to a community feel. It was very useful to me to have an access for my bicycle without having to push them through the lounge, and I like to keep my bins out the back where the neighbours didn't have to look at them.

Leaving all that aside, this will certainly add to the value of her house, which I don't begrudge her. What I do object to, is possible loss of sale or value if I do sell up, as several people online as well as in person see having a rear access to the tiny back garden as an advantage. (I say if, but actually this is not an issue as no-one has suggested I relinquish the access UNLESS I sell up).

Does anyone have any ideas on how I could ensure that I don't lose money on this, short of just telling her that no, I'm not prepared to extinguish the access, or is that the only way, really?

Thanks for any contributions. If anything really helpful comes up, I may even show her this page :)

Ric

I've just watched hones under the hammer where this guy bought a property and the guy in the next house had right of way through his back garden.

The guy who had just purchased the house blocked off the original gate and moved the right of way to the very back of the garden and fenced the right of way off so that the whole garden remained private and the neighbour could still access his own garden it was such a good idea I thought I would suggest it here :-)

So if she makes her garden just a little bit shorter she could fence it off and you could pave a little path at the back of that fence, win win :-)

That wouldn't work here as the side alley stops at the back of the houses so the person with the right of way would have to walk the whole length of the other person's garden.

Also not clear how doing this will stop someone who wants to stand outside and scream down the phone. Perhaps there's no signal inside the house ?

Agreed - don't do it.

OK I'm sure my last post got lost somehow but if there's only two houses then surely the person with the right of way would walk the length of their own garden? So say I owned the ops house and you were the neighbour I would just walk through my own garden right to the back of it, go out a gate and walk along a path that had been fenced off from your garden. OK it would make your garden maybe 2 ft shorter but at least I'd be coming and going and you wouldn't even see me.

As long as they can get out onto the road/path from the back of their garden. It wouldn't have worked when I had a house like that. The entrance to the path was right by the house.

I'm an end terrace with next door having access but I'm not the last house in my street, there is a side alley and then another block of 4 houses. The alley stops at the back corner of our houses, a fence goes from the centre of it the length of our gardens and we each have a gate from the start of the fence to the back corner of our house. My garden is entirely enclosed by other gardens and this gate, a corridor at the back would have no way out apart from walking back up my garden. My ILs have the exact same setup 100 miles away, I don't think it's unusual.

I'm mid terrace with access across the fenced off end of my neighbour's garden so separate access compared with your open access.

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES RELINQUISH YOUR RIGHT OF ACCESS!

I've put that in capitals because it's really really important for

1. Rear access to deliver large furniture items that won't fit through the front door

2. Rear access to garden to move garden waste like tree branches, grass cuttings etc

3. Rear access to do building work or garden work at the back for workmen not to tramp through your house

4. If you want to put a shed in the garden would you want to bring it through the house?

We've had all of the above since we lived here and without it the house would be wrecked or in the instance of the shed we'd have no shed. It would also massively devalue your house. Personally I wouldn't want to buy a house with no rear garden access except through the house.

Tell her she is free to buy the property for it's current market value and do what she likes with access and selling it on.

I'm a lawyer. Never never never give this up for all the reasons above. It's really important. Tell your neighbour you've taken legal advice and you are not prepared to give it up.

Also a buyer's solicitor is giong to find it very stranger as might any mortgage lender than you chose to reduce your property's value. Just don't do it. If you want to be nice to her offer to help her pay for some fencing so the access path is clearly defined and totally separate. from her garden. Is the access at the end of her land or across the middle of her garden though?

I agree that you could of course offer the property to her to buy.

User^ access paths can be moved if the parties both agree. Like I was suggesting earlier, move the access path to the very back of the neighbour's garden and put a fence up between the rest of the garden and the path if possible.

I viewed a mid terrace property with access going across the middle of the rear garden. It was going cheap as it needed a lot of work and I was looking to buy to add value. Suffice to say I did not buy it because of the access issue. I didn't want strangers traipsing through my garden.

Many many prospective buyers will have been put off when the previous owners sold the house to your neighbour. She will have been advised by her solicitor at the time that the right of way existed even if not aware at the time of putting in the offer. The price she paid will reflect that access being available. So as many other posters have said, she wanted her cake and now she wants to eat it at your expense. Don't be fooled by the naice way this requested is being packaged to you. She may be coming over as naive but actually be very aware of what she is asking of you. So another one saying to stand firm with your decision.

Say no.

If she wants to renegotiate the route of the path, let her do it with whoever her new neighbours are.

While I agree 100% with all the advice to the OP not to give up the right of way, like a previous poster I am amazed at how many of you would never consider a house with no separate access to the back garden. We've just bought a very expensive house in London in a terrace of about 40 equally expensive houses and not one has rear access! They never had it (built in the 1890s). It's entirely normal here and we just suck it up. We have small front gardens where the bins are kept and we're building a bike store in ours too. Needs some creative hedging or fencing but it's not impossible to keep it looking nice.

It would be a dealbreaker for me Jessie. It's not just bins and bikes, it's all the gardening stuff, log storage, access for tradesmen and windowcleaners. Lived in one once, never again.

Did she really expect you to do this because she asked-at no cost to her?

Jessie good luck with that, I hope your floors aren't carpeted. Just like Whoknows I've been there, but in my experience I had no front garden and if you've no front garden to put your bin in then you would probably have thought twice about that house. So rear access is a must.

I'm baffled as to why you didn't just say no.

Is this the first enormous favour she's asked you to do for her?

On the subject of rear access, today I have some garden stuff arriving. It is exactly the same width as an internal doorway. I am hoping the stated measurements are a slight over estimate rather than an underestimate! As it is I'll have to remove the kitchen door to stand a chance of getting it through to the garden.

It would probably be an extra 150 grand on your house and a drastically reduced choice where I live whoknows- that was the deal breaker for us..

Yes, all wood floors. The same floors that have had stuff carried over them since 1890.

2nds there's a lot of mid-terrace properties that your solution wouldn't work for. In my previous mid-terrace house the gate to the back gardens was at the front facing the street and the official access route was across the neighbours garden right by their kitchen window. To implement your solution they would have needed to lose an L-shaped chunk of their garden all the length of their garden to the end then across the end to ours - probably at least a quarter of their land.

They approached the problem by regularly storing wheelbarrows, piles of bricks and garden tools across the path and often leaning against the fence. They once put a lock on the gate - kindly saying that of course they would unlock it whenever we asked, but I firmly insisted that I would not accept having to ask permission to do something that was my legal right, and the lock was removed.

So so glad that we are in a nice semi without all this hassle now.

Do not under any circumstances relinquish this right OP. But keep on good terms with the neighbour - remember that any dispute with the neighbour must be declared when you sell and you don't want to have to declare a dispute about access rights.

Jessie McJessie that's good about the wooden floors, when I moved in mine was carpeted in the living room and hall lol. I still wouldn't have another property that only had access through the house though, and especially not now having kids.

Fish yes it won't work as a solution for all houses that have this issue but it might be a solution for OP, who knows?