Land dispute!! Cheeky offer?!

[NewHere77]

It has recently come to light due to neighbours pending house sale, that our neighbour has around 20 square metres of land at the top of her garden that legally belongs to our boundary. She has asked us to sign over the land to her for £200.

AIBU to think she is being a CF offering £200 for the land, as I think it likely adds a lot of value to neighbours house? (She initially wanted us to sign over land for free)!

The land adds about a third to neighbours garden and has a pretty view which isn’t overlooked.

Neighbour is playing down desirability of land but has also said that buyers will pull out if land is not included and has said she is willing to go to court to claim land.

If we disagree, she is threatening to use adverse possession claim but neither parties have been in either property long enough to claim adverse possession, although neighbour is talking about getting accounts from relatives of now deceased previous occupants of our house.

Part of me feels bad that we bought the house not knowing the extra land was ours so feels a bit rich asking for more money for it, the other side of me is thinking why should our neighbour profit from land that is not legally theirs. Interested to hear others perspectives and what land could be worth.

Thanks!

Unless you need the money to stay afloat, I would 100% take the land back if as you described it has a view/nice woodland adjacent and can control the light more. Will also value your property more for the future.

Oh that’s fab that @PropertyManager said about them acknowledging they don’t own it by offering to buy. If you don’t have it in text can you text them something like “so just ti confirm you are offering to pay £500 for our land that you’ve been using” or something similar

Jesus!!! Don’t give it to her for £200!!!!

oh my lord! Land is worth a fortune!

Ditto. How accessible is it to you?

You're neighbour might just be saying that the buyers will pull out of the sale if your land is not included.

Whether the buyers pull out or not isn't OP's problem.

You'd be insane to sell this land. It balances the size and shape of your garden and will make your house easier to sell. The enighbours will be moving out so now is your chnace to get it properly marked within your boundary before new people move in. Who cares what the piss taking neigbours thing of you, they've got bigger things to worry about and wont be around for much longer - ok their existing buyers will probably pull out, they have been deceived after all, but they will just have to remarket it with the correct boundary.

I agree @DeeLusional - I meant that they might be making it up to make OP feel guilty.

I hear lots of posts about taking back the land at the earliest convenience but we are also trying to manage neighbourly relations and makes it a bit more difficult that we are a semi. I need to think on this one.
Really I wouldn't worry too much about this, make sure you do the right thing for yourselves, these people are selling their house due to a breakup, you likely won't even know them in 12 months' time.

If they start being dicks they'll have to disclose an ongoing neighbour dispute as well when they sell the house (and if they do get snippy, you can use that as leverage to get them to behave themselves as what they want most in the world right now is to sell their house for enough money to buy something new for each of them).

I really think you should move the fence if you can, so there's no confusion or ambiguity for prospective buyers as they're the people you want to get on with in the future.

Additionally, given that they have been using your land for free for all this time there's the possibility (if you want to be exceptionally awkward and pedantic) that they could owe you X years of rent on the land of yours that they have been using. I'm not suggesting you actually charge them this but it's another argument to keep in your bag of tools to get this resolved fairly if they start coming out with rubbish about adverse possession again.

£200? They are taking the piss.Erect a fence to mark your boundary.

No idea if she understands the value or not.

Not CF because you can simply reject it.

Talk to your solicitor or estate agent about whether to simply reject or to make a counter offer.

£200 is taking the mick. We bought an acre of land next to our existing garden which was grazing pasture 3 yrs ago. The seller wanted £20,000 for it.
I had some estate agents come out and value our property as it was and then re-value with the attached 1 acre land. The value of our property increased by £100-200K dependant on how landscaped it was so we purchased the land for £20K. Can you do similar?

We purchased a patch of land attached to our garden - it has god knows how many restrictions on it (you can do nothing with it but use it as a garden) it was £20K. They are pulling a fast one OP. Seek immediate legal advice.

The law changes surrounding adverse possession make it very very hard now. This case wouldn't even make it to the case little as the OP says no one has lived there very long.

I'll buy it for £250

They are hoping on selling their house for a higher price, thinking they can offer you £200 quid for stealing your land.

I bought a house where 1/4 of the garden was technically owned by a neighbour but in practicality was fenced off and used as though it belonged to the property I was buying.

The neighbour who owned it had bought land to build a house and then not included a section when it came to the practicalities of putting up their fencing.

There was a time limit on it. When I bought it there was 5 years left for the original owner to stake their claim. It expired in my ownership and I later sold the property with the land now unequivocally included.

It was all very amicable (I'd asked the neighbours before I bought if they were interested in the land, they were not) and uneventful with no cash changing hands.

Personally I think some people suggesting larger sums of money here might be unrealistic. You aren't being asked to sell land in use that is currently incorporated into your physical boundary. You're being asked to sign away a legal technicality to make it easier for your neighbour to sell their property (presumably before your right to claim it expires) and you've been offered a goodwill gesture. My guess is that if you say no, you'll not only risk their sale but you'll also have the responsibility to correct and make good all the boundaries asap.

You've been offered a gesture of goodwill for something you weren't aware of or were using. Is there good reason to make everyone's life harder?

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It's not the neighbour's land. It's yours.

I'd make it clear you won't be giving it away, and you may not be open to selling it at all, and certainly not for the cost of solicitor fees.

YANBU

Whether OP knew about the land before or not is not a reason to give it away.

I wonder if neighbour has taken legal advice about adverse possesion or has looked it up and is spouting rubbish hoping that OP will just agree.

To the previous poster who claimed their neighbours land and profited from selling it you must be so proud of yourself.

And guilt is definitely something women excel at.

Just for reference- We had a 2m x 9m strip of land that we sold to our neighbours as it would give them rear access. We sold it for £4k 2020. The value that it adds to their house is far more than £4k.

A friend of mine sold a piece of her already small city garden to a neighbour. I don't know how much she got for it but she very much regretted selling as he built a garage on it which blocked her outlook.

Don't sell unless you really have to.

You need a solicitor to tell you how to enforce your rights, and a land valuer to tell you what it's worth. This is one for the professionals.

Can I refer you to my previous post. Since we are dealing with adjoining plots of land, if the neighbours and previous owners of the neighbouring property have been in possession of the land for 10 years and reasonably believed the land was theirs, they may have a claim for adverse possession.