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!

I disagree with PPs saying your solicitor should have noticed - unless they visited the property they would rely on you agreeing that the boundary lines appeared to be correct and in line with what you have seen. And as you say - if it's overgrown and you didn't look in that much detail, it's quite easy to see how you may never have noticed that the plan and the actual garden were slightly different.

But now you know you definitely need to decide whether you want to sell it - and get a proper valuation which will be far in excess of £200 - or reclaim it and benefit from a bigger garden yourself and the added value to your property.

I don't think they can claim adverse possession unless they themselves have used it for 10 years - they can't include use by previous owners I'm sure. And if you counter claim I think they would fail - see this:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/adverse-possession-of-registered-land/practice-guide-4-adverse-possession-of-registered-land

But definitely get a valuation asap and then legal advice if needs be. And don't sell to the CFs for £200! I get it was a misunderstanding on both sides - but now you both know the real situation it doesn't mean you have to just hand it over.

If you have never known you own this land, why are you so keen to keep it?

My own suggestion would be to guestimate how much the land will add to the value of your neighbour's property, and then ask for 50% of this. It's a starting point for a negotiation.

If you play hardball and go in with a super high price or even refuse to sell at all, there is a good chance a court will award your neighbours with the land due to adverse possession, and you will get nothing. Adverse possession is not that hard to prove if fences have been in the wrong place and nobody has complained for over a decade, especially if the previous owners are still alive and are happy to confirm their ignorance.

No way would I sell even if you’re able to. That triangle makes your plot a much better shape.

Don’t involve yourself in any costs. You don’t have to rush to do anything right now, but I’d be pushing DH to reclaim the land back from all the brambles.

They were fortunate to have the use of your property for the time they lived there, but now this has come to light, I'd be keeping the land! Your neighbour won't sell for as much as they were hoping, but that's life, and the cheekily low offer (and threat of taking you to court over it) would only make it easier for me to shrug and enjoy my newly discovered plot of land all the more!

You certainly need legal advice.

That is the only thing you should do before your next step, which is to clear away the scrub and put up a new fence on the boundary to enclose your property.

Which you should do at the earliest possible opportunity, subject, of course, to the legal advice. Monday is not too soon.

You need to find a surveyor who can deal with boundary disputes and land valuations. If you want the land back they can help measure your garden based on land registry plans and mark where the boundary should be. If you’d like to sell the land to your neighbour they can help you agree a fair price based on the uplift to your neighbours property value from the additional land.

There isn’t a boundary dispute, the boundary is clear hence NDN wanting to buy. She hasn’t been there long enough to claim it.

I would not sell but would clear the land and fence the land within your garden.

Sell and anything could happen. The new owners could put a simmer house there, or a trampoline, something that gives you a horrible view, anything.

Your garden will be much better in it’s proper rectangular shape.

If they're saying the land is only worth £200 then it shouldn't effect their sale much... They can knock £200 off for the buyers.

I wouldn't even give a counter offer, but make sure I was clearing the area asap and effecting a solid fence at the boundary.
If you are going to offer then start at £50k and don't go lower than £30k. If it's effecting their house sale then it's worth far more to them than you currently, so they'll have to consider that. Tell them you've had it valued.
If you sell, then also take into consideration that losing it will bring the value of your house down and potentially make it harder to sell.

Untrue. The law changed a fair while ago to disallow adverse possession claims. The only way the neighbour could claim the land is if she registered a claim and after following an lengthy procedure, the owner didn’t dispute. This doesn’t appear to have happened.

The land belongs to the house you bought. It's yours. End off.

FGS don’t sell and especially not for that spectacularly piss-taking offer!! Your garden will be a much better shape in the original rectangular format. Plus do look into what pp’s are saying about the whole mortgage thing - the entire situation may not even be up for discussion!

Point out to your partner that you can't sell it unless your mortgage provider agrees.

This. You MUST get access to the land ASAP to break their claim of exclusive use. The threat of an adverse possession claim is then dead in the water and you can negotiate sale on your own terms if you want to. Or not.

I would have been open to negotion up to the point that she threatened to go to court - at that point i would have informed her the price was one million pounds and a cadbury creme egg, given her a large hearty belly laugh and told her to instruct her solicitor.
Entitled dunderhead.

Ha, so cheeky! If she could claim adverse possession she wouldn’t have been asking you to sign it over or offering to pay something for it.

re-establish your boundary and yes I would look back over the conveyancing of your purchase - I know we had boundary conversations with our purchase.

Have a look on the sales page for her house, has it specifically been photographed or mentioned on there? If so I'd call the estate agent and let them know that they shouldn't really be selling part of your property on their website and to get it taken down and corrected.

So what if the buyer falls through? Not your problem. What you don't want is someone buying, putting a new fence up and having to go through the process of reclaiming back your land.

She has admitted it isn't hers by making an offer to have it transferred. So keep that evidence and the threats she is making.

Id be getting a cease and desist or equivalent 'you can't sell my land' letter to her asap next week.

Absolutely outrageously cheeky! Fight her all the way. Good luck and keep us updated!

There is NO way I'd sell.
I'd reclaim the land and reinstate the boundary. And I would do that now irrespective of whether you eventually do sell or not.

If you do sell I would be looking to sell at a premium over and above it's value.
Views add thousands to houses.
Eg if value is £5k I'd be looking for £10-15k

Well no. Get a land referencer if you want it evaluated but it's not £200. Piss taker.

30 grand OP: https://www.purplebricks.co.uk/moving-guides/how-to-value-garden-land#:~:text=The%20price%20of%20land%20per,coming%20in%20at%20£1%2C526.

Buying additional garden can be as much as £1000 per meter, that was what the owner of the field at the back of us was quoting.

Agree with the others get legal advice and go from there! Definitely should reclaim it too!

How can you sell off part of the title deed that is mortgaged?

You can’t. Your mortgage co lent you money for the whole property and hold the deeds until your mortgage is paid off.

You can’t just sell bits.

I used to work in property and land management and had a very similar case to this. The encroaching party had moved their fence and built a shed on the land which belonged to the government. I instructed our land agent to give them notice to move the fence to the correct boundary and they refused, claiming adverse possession. We also wrote to the Estate Agent and sent a copy of the title and instructed them to remove the land from the advert for sale. We then took the encroaching party to court. They turned up in court to fight the case. The judge said that it was clear that they did not own the land & did not qualify for adverse possession & gave them 24 hours to move the shed and the fence. He awarded us full legal costs too. They claimed that they were broke so our solicitor put a charge on their title deeds. This meant that ten months later when they sold their house, their solicitor had to pay us the legal costs from the proceeds of the sale before they could complete.