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!

Totally agree. (And I am a lawyer).

Wow! That extra triangle of land would make a massive difference to NDN garden. Personally, I would only sell if I needed the money and only for what it's really worth.

Do you own the land up to the large trees across the field past the 2 fences? You could build rentals on that land if you wanted.

The wooden fence is on the boundary between my next door neighbour and next door but one. Mine and neighbours current boundary is the metal wire fence.

When the boundary is rectified the wooden fence will never be in our boundary as the line goes up diagonally and meets the corner of the wooden fence and the dry stone wall at the back.

Hope this makes sense.

I would say to the neighbours that you need to restore the boundary to that which your mortgage company have agreed to lend on.

It is OK to say you have thought about it and you are sorry to say you don’t want to sell, and that your consideration of the issue brought the mortgage issue into focus. So in fact you would now like to tidy it up and restore the boundary.

it is yours after all: that’s hardly confrontational.

You need a surveyor not an estate agent as they are mostly only concerned with properties that are easy to sell. A surveyor will give you a valuation. You then have to decide if you want to sell or keep the land. Don’t let your neighbour bully you into letting her have it cheap. It is not your problem if her sale falls through. Of course there is always the option of negotiating a sale directly with her buyers. Still get a market price for it.

@NewHere77 any update? Hope it has been relatively drama free for you.