We have today discovered through our solicitors that the house we have agreed to buy at full asking price has a significant chunk missing out of the middle of the garden which wouldn't legally belong to us as a sewage pumping station is underground there, and a long stretch of the property, although legally our property, requires right of access for the sewage company at a width of 3 meters. The timber garage has been built on this despite the deeds clearly stating that the access cannot be blocked. When challenged, the vendor has said that the sewage company only actually need one meter of access to check the pump monthly and it has never been a problem in the 7 years they have lived there which is why they built the garage where it is. We are hoping that this will be our forever home so I'm sure that at some point in the next 50 years, the sewage company are going to want their full 3 meters to deal with any significant issues.
We are very annoyed that this was not disclosed prior to this point and the estate agent claims that they did not know about it either though the vendor clearly did.
In all honesty, we were planning to rip down the garage and rebuild it anyway but now we know this, we will look to rebuild elsewhere in the garden so we could keep the access free in the long term. Even with the chunk missing, it is a very good sized garden as we can't see this being a problem as such and although not ideal to have the pumping station essentially in our garden, that's not a huge issue either for our day to day living from what we can currently assess.
But we are angry that what was advertised is not what we are buying and would like to renegotiate our offer. Are we being unreasonable in asking for a £5000 reduction which would cover the rebuild of the timber garage at least? I know we were going to do it anyway for our own taste but there is almost 6m² of garden missing compared to what was advertised.