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’m genuinely surprised by how many people have suggested this is the solicitors fault.

The OP has posted a screenshot of the HMLR map search with the correct boundary clearly depicted within this. Granted, the pre purchase enquiries were obviously lax if there was an altered boundary and it wasn’t stated, but conveyancers don’t go to the property, they’re working on the information supplied by both sides and presumably the OP was in receipt of the registered title plan when they visit the property so it really is buyer beware.

OP you don’t need to pay for a survey, you need to instruct a professional to communicate the law to your neighbour, as my previous post, I’m happy to discuss if you want to drop me a DM.

Send her a letter saying it’s yours and you won’t be selling. Then ignore her.
In 15 years of doing conveyancing I have visited a property once- when we were selling and also dealing with the late owners estate.

Totally, @eatsleepfarmrepeat . Conveyancing solicitors don't visit properties! Their job is to convey the correct legal title, not to make sure the actual garden fence is in the correct place (or that the actual white goods, light fixtures or anything else that they are told are included in the sale is in situ). That's up to the purchaser to check on. In this case, the boundaries are correctly marked in documentation, and the OP legally owns the parcel of land in question - it is the OP who failed to check the actual, on the ground situation. When we were in the process of buying our property, the title plan showing the line of the dividing fence and the actual fence didn't match up when I visited the property. The solicitor couldn't possibly have known this. The plan was correct, and, had I not spotted the actual wonky fence prior to purchase, we would have been conveyed the correct piece of land on the other side of the fence, and would have legally owned it after sale - it would have just been up to me to approach the neighbours to get the fence moved. As it was, I told the solicitor to tell the sellers they needed to move the fence in line with the title plan before exchange of contracts.

Exactly, by registered post with proof of delivery: "Dear Neighbour, Just to say, in reference to the plot of land of reference (which, as you will have seen from both your own deeds and from mine on record at the land registry, forms part of my property), I am not currently interested in selling such land. Yours faithfully"

£200 is reasonable on the face of it. But only if you have managed without the land so far. 20sqm is tiny. About the size of a living room or 0.0049 acres.

it seems that it wouldn’t affect any future sale as you were already not using it. Are you really going to go to the bother of changing the fence now?

I would let them have it as long as they pay the £200 and any legal fees.

It might be worth a lot more than the 5-10k you think. We've recently investigated a very small bit of land adjacent to our garden and it was quoted up to 80k (by Land Registry). This is most definitely not an expensive area.

How could it possibly be worth that? It’s a sliver of garden. There is absolutely no possibility of it being developed.

there is some wild greed on this site.

@Westernesse we were looking to buy! We weren't selling (we could do with 80k). We were shocked too but land is very expensive.

if you have a mortgage you would need agreement from the bank to sell as well...

Land Registry gives out quotes for pieces of land? If so, I would doubt the accuracy.

in the OP’s case, the actual sliver of ground itself is worth about £50 at £11k per acre. It’s 0.0049 acres That’s the price for land which can’t feasibly be developed.

if a small bit of land, even 0.15 of an acre, and there is the prospect of building a house in it then 80k is about right. The OPs piece of land is much, much, much smaller than this and cannot be developed.

It’s very unlikely that the solicitor made a mistake as they never check that what’s on the ground matches the plans. The onus is on the buyer to make sure that the plans they are asked to approve when purchasing match what they’ve agreed to buy. How can the solicitor know where the physical boundary on the ground is?

Land Registry do not give valuations. They only hold previous price paid information. Some one has misinformed you as to where the figure has come from.

I wouldn’t sell it. Looking at it again, it would be detrimental to your own sale and garden. Imagine if the new buyers took all the brambles down and built something there. It makes the boundary look uneven 😂 and it takes a whack of your garden! They’d be right at the back of your garden. I’d think about privacy as well. No way.

I hope OP can convince DH to keep not sel. It sounds like a lovely area of garden.
Unfortunately neighbours may loose their sale but not OP's fault. Neighbours could have known about this for years and have been keeping stum hoping it would never come to light. CF indeed trying to minimalise the situation and intimidate OP into accepting £200

OP - if you have a mortgage not only will you need their permission to sell, if they grant it they may require you to use some or all of the sum you receive to pay off the principal since your property will be worth less, they may change your terms or increase your interest, you will have to pay tax - possibly capital gains tax on the sum, or if not then at least income tax. I don't think your partner has really thought through the implications. Even if you charge a fair whack you could well end up barely gaining or even worse off, with a devalued property. Your neighbour really is the only one with anything to gain here.

We have a set up like you where the neighbours land ended in a point, and ours is wider. Before we moved in (probate) there was only a half built fence because the neighbour didn't want to have a garden that was contained so she used our garden for her views (funnily enough also East Midlands and backs into trees lol) ... we fenced it off because we had a baby and wanted a secure garden for her as she could run onto the road as it was, neighbour was livid but she got over it.
Wothnyour garden though it pinches the end of the garden so it's giving her better land and you worse land IMO.
Whatever you do, listen to the solicitor above and seek advice via mortgage and local solicitor

When I was trying to sell my house, I found that the deeds I had showed a different boundary to my neighbours deeds. Hers was a straight line separating the garden. Mine went more of a diagonal up to her shed door. She'd built a fence (with my permission) which more or less followed her deeds (and made the most sense) to separate the gardens but then the subsequent aftermath of sorting out the boundaries was a nightmare as it only then came to light there was a massive discrepancy. The area of land was only a few square FEET (not meters) but we still had to get my mortgage company involved to release the land from the deeds and change the boundary officially the land registry. My buyer pulled out as it was too complicated. It was a complete nightmare over nothing!

OP - do not give/sell them the land. Especially not for £200. Your mortgage company WILL need to be informed. Tough if the neighbour loses their sale.

They can’t sell without the agreement of the mortgage compant.

There is zero prospect of any tax being applied to an area of land so small.

You might have trouble selling in the future if you do not claim this land back.

the sale is lost for your neighbour anyway... land sale through the proper channels takes weeks if not months.

That will just be related to the fee paid when the land was transferred. The minimum scale 1 fee covers the value of land up to £80,000. That's all the Land Registry are interested in.

There is zero prospect of any tax being applied to an area of land so small.

Not if it's worth £200, but if it's worth several thousands, which seems far more likely, then there is a high chance of tax being due.

I think you may have misunderstood the value stated in the deeds for that bit of land. Did it say it was less than £80,000? If so, it simply means a precise value wasn't given but was confirmed as less than £80K. So could easily only be worth a few hundred pounds.

@Westernesse why is OP supposedly greedy to want land that is indicated as hers in the deeds, the mortgage company lent on basis of it being hers, just because it is overgrown so she hasn't known that the boundary was in the wrong place?
Why is her neighbour not greedy when either it is overgrown in her side too and she also didn't realise boundary was wrong, or it isn't and she realised and kept deliberately quiet about it? Neighbour also ought to have properly checked deeds and realised she was occupiying land that wasn't hers. So if someone is 'greedy' because they didn't check the deeds and boundaries properly both are equally so.

In any case - it's totally irrelevant to talk about greed. The land belongs to OP. That's the beginning and end of it.