Are we complete idiots?

[Happy20]

We have an ongoing issue with a boundary which isn't as easily answered as you would think! Basically the neighbors think a piece of land is there's when we are pretty sure it's ours.

When we brought our house the sellers said a meadow at the bottom of our drive was theirs, they mowed it and used it, even had a couple sheep on it once.
We moved in, all fine and dandy until the next weekend when neighbour is out there mowing the meadow. Very kind of him we think because obviously he is being neighbourly what with us having only just moved in. We think we've struck it rich with such lovely, thoughtful neighbours. Wife of neighbour comes round the next day with a welcome card and has a nice superficial chat. We thank her profusely for mowing our meadow and offer to help them out if they ever need a hand, well you can probably see where this is going. Neighbour tells us it's their meadow and there must have been a mix up. We explain what the old owners told us and she claims they ' must have been talking about another bit of land as it has always been theirs'. After much awkwardness and many protesting about how old neighbours must have pulled a fast one (without actually saying they have pulled a fast one) we leave it at we will talk to our solicitor and her being nice but increasingly frosty. I think she honestly thought we would just say it's fine and not bother with taking it any further. She seemed very out out that we would be talking to the solicitor and old owners solicitor.

Now is the massive issue!

Our house is very old, the deeds were lost a long time ago. We have insurance to cover the lack of deeds (can't remember what it's called but our solicitor insisted we needed this) and can see up to date deeds from our sale with the old owners, but cannot find anything further back than that.

So YABU - leave the neighbors to it. You brought a house with no deeds just hope they don't want to build on it.
YANBU - it's clearly your land and the are trying to pull a fast one.

We are waiting on a call back from our solicitor but in the meantime does anyone have any ideas where we might find really old, long list deeds? I would be forever grateful!!

When I drop £500K on something, I will fight tooth and nail to give the person doing the due diligence on that purchase the space to do a good fucking job...

Agreed. I just held up a £85k purchase for 3 months because the allocated parking wasn't on the deeds. Thankfully, our solicitor was very clear in recommending this got sorted before exchange, as it's much harder to fix later. The house had been sold 4 times in 13 years and never been sorted before. I was just clear with the vendor that the parking was a deal breaker and they needed to get the deeds sorted ASAP if they wanted to complete ASAP. Not my fault!

I'm absolutely boggling at this. The 'maintaining' of the meadow for a start. Does the meadow adjoin farmland? Someone must own this piece of land.

Chances are it's common land?

"The very worse case for us would be if the neighbours went for adverse possession, got it and then tried to build on it as it would face directly into our windows. It would honestly make it pretty unbearable.
Is there a way we can stop that happening?"

They would need to apply for planning permission, and their application would have to include detailed plans of what they propose to build. If the windows on the new properties overlook yours, you can reasonably object on the basis of loss of privacy.

Anyone else picturing the post from the neighbours’ POV?

Is my new neighbour a CF

Hi all. I’m wondering if anyone can shed some light on what might be happening here?

When I was mowing the part of my lawn that we’ve left go to meadow, I spotted our new neighbours had moved in.

Later that day, I popped over to say hello, and welcome to the neighbourhood. The woman seemed nice enough, but was a bit strange as she kept thanking me for cutting their grass.

I think she’s trying to annex our garden.

Land register...or their property's deeds? If both of you have no record of it belonging to you....it could belong to anyone!

We sold our previous property the year before last. It was a Georgian listed building and we held the title Deeds, clearly showing the boundary of our property - which was completely fenced in, with a boundary wall along one side of the back garden. In fact our cottage was part of a bigger estate a couple of hundred years ago, so when we finished paying our mortgage we were amazed to be given a foot high of paper which were our Deeds and also included Deeds for half the village!

We lived in the house for nearly 40 years so it had never been registered with Land Registry, our solicitor advised that registration was normally done (in our county at least) by the purchasers solicitor on purchase - our solicitor said they did this as part of their purchase process. Unfortunately, our buyer's solicitor had been a complete incompetent all through the buying/selling process, she woked part time and kept handing the work over to different people who were completely in the dark. Anyway, she registered only part of the property, don't know how that was managed to be honest as it was a straightforward piece of land with a house on it . The buyer emailed us with a scan of the original Deeds and asked for confirmation of the boundary. So I can fully understand how a separate piece of land could be left off the registration process, as part of the garden of our house had been left off the registration with Land Registry and the annex had been registered but not the main house, even though this was all clearly marked on the Deeds. we were so glad that our mortgage lender had not shredded our Deeds as had happened with someone we know.

The properties either side of ours had been bought and sold a few times in the years we were there, so no dispute about boundaries had ever existed - our mortgage and planning permission for the extension would never have been accepted without the Deeds anyway. It is so unfortunate the Deeds do not exist to your house because i would be not at all surprised if the meadow belonged to your property, and I would not trust your neighbours claim to it either. Can the previous owner not confirm it for you?

Ok there is a little unknown fact that might be happening here

Yup, that sentence immediately makes me think 'this person is almost certainly an expert in property law'

Here is a list of things that don't matter, as regards the OP's ownership of the meadow:

1. Old deeds
2. Ordnance survey maps
3. Local historians' archives
4. The opinions of neighbouring farmers.
5. Everything else.

The OP does not own the meadow because it is not included in the title plan that she inexplicably did not check. It wouldn't matter if the meadow had belonged to the OP's house from the Domesday book onwards, it doesn't belong to it now.

Some of those things might be useful in proving that the neighbours don't own it either. That is the best the OP can hope for at this stage.

Just to mention that Land Registry information is not always accurate.
I had almost exactly the same problem when I bought an old property.
The NDNs insisted that a small patch of land at the rear of our house, was part of their property and fenced it off. I knew differently as the deeds (thankfully still available and showing all transactions over the previous 150 years or so) showed the limits of each property and were very clear.
Eventually, they obtained a copy of the Land Registry records, however the land plan showed that their entire back garden was owned by my house, which was incorrect. I was happy to have the garden removed from the records for my property, so all ended up reasonably well but only after years of protracted unpleasantness (euphemism for Armageddon).
One of the reasons why I was confident that the land (an extremely small area) was attached to my property, was because my deeds pack contained copies of every transaction for the neighbouring property too.
It may be worth your while asking your neighbours if they have their deeds available and if you could see and copy them, to add to your own deeds. They may even have copies of your deeds too. (I suspect that this would need to be arranged via a Solicitor or Conveyancer.)
The information held at the Land Registry is not always accurate, as I found out!

OP you haven’t answered questions re access , is the only access from your drive ?

I don't want to raise a MN cliche without good cause but a diagram would help in this instance as I'm not sure how the NDNs can access the meadow except across your driveway?

W

Has anyone got the song 'One Man went to Mow' in their head? 😂

Was it indicated anywhere in your solicitor's documentation or correspondence that you owned the meadow? Presumably, part of your reason for purchasing the property was because of the attached land. Did you make your solicitor aware of that and do you have anything in writing to him/her to that effect? If so, your solicitor should have obtained confirmation and documentation showing that the land belonged to you before contracts were exchanged.

If your sellers stated on the sale documents that they had used/maintained the land for a given time, did you or your solicitor get anything in writing?
Sellers have a duty to declare but hearsay won't do. If they have lied or omitted facts they should have declared, they could be liable for compensation.
Your recourse is the solicitor who handled your purchase imo.

It is probably ‘common land’ - which is not owned by anyone. Allegedly if you graze animals on it it for a time period (something like 3 years) then you can claim it. There are bits of common land around... one of my neighbours has ‘appropriated’ some by having chickens on it / no-one objecting.... weird old laws.

If it is not in your deeds or your neighbours... then neither of you own it.

I think the OP may not be returning.

@MinecraftMother

I am a property solicitor too and the property advice on these pages incenses me!

@powkin I am interested by your story as we have a very similar situation: land attached to our ex-council house garden that is not on our or neighbours' deeds and still council owned - however the council long ago before we bought it fenced it in for reasons unclear to anyone, so we are the only ones having access. I feel strengthened that you are putting in a claim for adverse possession as I wasn't sure that would be possible.

@patsypie I do now, great earworm for 3 hour hospital appointment, cheers!

@cochineal7 you can’t claim adverse possession if you’ve not been using the land. The council have likely fenced you out for this exact reason.

@dogbowlspaghetti sorry I wasn't clear: the council fenced the land IN for us, and out for themselves. The only access is actually for us (and we use it).

Did the Vendors represent to you that they rights to the meadow based on long use/ adverse possession? If so, how did yhey do this, directly to you, via Auctioneer, via their solicitors in writing? Did they at the time they completed the sale give a sworn declaration setting out the history of their use of the meadow? With a map attached clearing showing that the land they claim rights over is the meadow?? If not, what questions were asked & answered about the meadow during the purchase process?? Your solicitor will be able to tell you?

If the legal position regarding the meadow was misrepresented to you then someone is at fault here... unless it was explained & you misunderstood the position.

You need these questions answered first before you can know where you stand.

If the vendors told you, in writing & with a map, that they had use of meadow for 20 years (whatever adverse possession time is wherever you are based) then you may have a fight on your hands with your new neighbours.

If vendors were telling porkies & turns out that misrepresentations were made & you relied on them to your detriment, then look for a refund of a portion of the purchase price paid.

It all depends on what is recorded in writing though... not what you 'thought' & may have misunderstood.