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!

£200 offer is an insult! We purchased a small piece of land to the side of our house. It was literally big enough to fit 6 cars on. It cost us £4,000 and that was several years ago. We purchased from the management company where we live so £200 is absolute insult to you.

We faced a similar thing when it turned out we owned the land we thought was shared with another neighbour. Only discovered it when we were selling. Obviously it complicated matters during the conveyancing stage, and the other other party used this as an excuse to reduce the price of their offer. Bit odd as they were gaining land but I guess they were worried about future disputes.

Bet the buyer hasn't genuinely threatened to pull out but has positioned for a price reduction. They will be cheeky and base reduction on the current market value. Obviously your neighbour isn't going to tell you that. So the neighbours are technically 'making' money on whatever is settled below land market value!

I'd personally not agree to anything. let your neighbour either re-negotiate with their buyer and if they loose that buyer, at least they know how to correctly sell it to the next buyer. I may even compromise and offer to erect a fence so their potential buyers can see the exact true boundary of the garden. Fresh buyers will come along and they won't miss what was never there and your neighbours will probably get a better asking price than the reduced one from buyers who would feel a bit cheated. You get your land back and if you like your new neighbours you can always sell it to them in your own time.

Only issue is that they may have to declare why previous buyers pull out but that's their issue.

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OP what on earth are you doing spending your time on MH? You need to pull out your documentation when your property was conveyed to you at purchase. Also do you have a mortgage on your property. The mortgage company has a charge on your title ownership.
It is a very serious matter if the solicitor made a mistake in the registration of your property at the Land Registry.
Tomorrow first thing ring the solicitor who handled the conveyance and request an urgent appointment with regard to what you and the mortgage company purchased and what your registered title includes.
Forget about those neighbours- just tell them it’s in the hands of your solicitor.
This looks like allegedly attempted title theft.

I’m sorry to hear about some previous experiences on here! The one about the neighbours taking the vulnerable persons land is just horrible, glad your family were able to get most of it back.

To answer a question, the white triangle in the middle is an unregistered bit of land that seems to sit in our hedge.

I would say the pic I sent is mostly accurate although in real life our garden is a bit more rectangular at the back than the diagram makes out.

I took some photos today. The land hasn’t been tended to and the wall at the back has fallen down. I would also say the last couple of metres didn’t really have an established boundary when we moved in. It was just bramble and then we put chicken wire fence in where we thought the boundary was to stop the dog getting out.

The more I look at the deeds the more I wonder how the neighbour could truly believe that the land was hers. The deeds show a sharp triangle and in real life the boundary is rectangular.

We are going to try and get some advice tomorrow. Will keep you updated.

Thanks again for your input!

Re your second point, people didn’t used to be so money-grabbing and were often friends with their neighbours. So it is perfectly feasible that one neighbour could have given over a tiny part of their garden to a neighbour for any number of reasons. Costs of signing over and changing title deeds would most likely have prohibited a lot of folks from doing so officially causing problems further down the line as seen in OP’s case.

For those who say how could you not know the title deed plot boundaries, I have never been sent such details when purchasing a house, although I haven’t purchased for 17 years. Maybe it’s more common now but it certainly wasn’t in the past where I live in Scotland.

I hope things can be resolved with minimal stress to all concerned. I just wonder how people here would feel if they suddenly discovered that part of their property / curtilage didn’t actually belong to them and a neighbour was asking for £xxx for the privilege. Tough luck eh?

Can’t get full view due to position of hedge but this is the view of the top of the garden.

Is the fence on the legal boundary or is that where it has been put?

Re your second point, people didn’t used to be so money-grabbing and were often friends with their neighbours. So it is perfectly feasible that one neighbour could have given over a tiny part of their garden to a neighbour for any number of reasons.

I don't think they would've planned it to be a permanent thing, unless they were absolutely minted.

The neighbour is being money-grabbing as she's trying to get cash from something that isn't hers.

The fence in the pic doesn’t represent legal boundary yet. It’s from what we thought the boundary was when we first moved in.

Best wishes with sorting it out OP. It sounds like you've got a bonus bit :)

@porridgeisbae

The neighbour is being money-grabbing as she's trying to get cash from something that isn't hers.—

Well we can only speculate on their outlook but I suspect the couple just want to sell quickly to end their joint financial affairs since they are splitting up. I expect that finding out there is a question mark over ownership of part of the garden is a the last thing they need. They likely bought the property thinking what they saw was what they were buying as did the OP. Next door should be going back to their purchasing solicitor to ask how this has come about and what can be done to rectify it. Sounds like it could take some time so they may just allow the overgrown bit of ground to go back to OP.

OP you need to get a fence or some sort of boundary marker up. That will stop an adverse possession claim in its tracks. She could be going to her lawyers tomorrow too to start a claim - and then whether it's successful or not, you're stuck in expensive legal hell for god knows how long.

ETA: and start using the disputed land. Pop a table and chairs there or something.

We were in a very similar position when we bought our house (although I was aware that the land was ours but had been fenced off by the developers). Check if your home insurance policy has legal cover. Ours did and we used it to claim our land back. No surveyors were required in our case. Good luck

Both OP and her neighbour have not checked the boundary correctly when they bought their respective properties. The fence on that side of your boundary is OPs responsibility, at some point it has been moved from its original position. It looks fairly new so I’m presuming that the op had it replaced recently It may have been a simple error by the contractor who has just straightened it out. If the op had no idea of the actual boundary it would be easy to instruct the contractor. It doesn’t mean they have “gifted” that part to the neighbour.
I think your best course of action is to contact your mortgage lender first thing tomorrow, explain the situation and ask if you are allowed to sell the land. If not then it’s an easy course of action.
I would also pay £3-6 to download your neighbours land registry documents to see what they agreed to. If there are discrepancies then it will be obvious.
Fences do not legally demarcate your boundary they are just to secure your garden. I know plenty of people who have large gardens rurally that don’t fence to their boundaries, if you have a badgers set in that part of the garden the badgers will demolish a fence overnight. So where you put the fence is irrelevant.

By the neighbours pricing of land they’re valuing your entire garden at about £1500!!! Absolute jokers! See if they want to sell their garden to you at that price!

It’s not a very old fence if it’s the one in the wrong place.

UK - It's not an automatic legal right, the claimant has to go to court for a judgement which they may or may win., and amazingly, you can try this where there is actually a legal owner

Excellent update OP, good luck with getting it sorted and keep us updated

Sounds like a tricky situation but you can depersonalise it by saying that the correct legal position must be established & followed for future sale of both properties. It is possible to do a land swap whereby you would exchange this land for another section of garden that works for you. This would need to be okayed by both mortgage companies and handled by a solicitor so takes time. The value of your property is based on land registry documents so don’t be pressured into rushing a decision for the sake of their sale. If it falls through, so be it. Otherwise you could go straight into a dispute with somebody new. You need it corrected in order to sell your property, but this can be sorted & you are not looking to move yet. A surveyor can check & advise both parties (to neutralise things), and mark out the correct boundary. No concessions to the neighbours, it needs to match land registry.

There is a fence in the background behind the chicken wire and buahes, is that not your boundary line?

I still think that where your boundary should be makes your garden more rectangle and improves the ability to enjoy the view. I wouldn't sell it. I also find it hard to believe that anyone would really think their land would branch out like that without knowing they were encroaching.

If your fence is not around the land in dispute then legally she may be able to claim it without paying you anything. Get a fence around the land promptly.

You can prosecute her for trespass if she wont move. Simple

No legal action is simple. In most cases the only winners are the lawyers.