NEIGHBOUR CROSSED THE BOUNDARY BEFORE EXCHANGE

[MummyToBeAgain1]

Hi

I need some advice please.

We're buying a semi detached property and due to exchange and complete in a week or 2.

Over the weekend we drove past the property to find a fence being built between our garden and the property on the right. I suspected they had come in to our garden at a glance so drove past again yesterday.

The fence had fully been up and clearly it crossed in to our garden (to be). I've attached a quick drawing which shows what I mean. The red line is the fence the neighbour has put up.

Just for some context this is a auction property as the owner has died and the children wanted a quick sale. This means that we have a deadline for completition which makes things more stressful.

What do we do now?

Tia

Definitely contact the auction house and inform them that it is in the hands of your solicitor.

They may be in a position to push the sellers solicitors who will need to verify the information you have provided.
This may be by sending a proxy to the property or a chartered surveyor

(I don't mean to derail the OP's thread but wasn't there a similar thread in the past several days about neighbours tearing out shrubs and changing a boundary? I am trying to find that thread to show a friend; thanks to anyone who can find it.)

Was that a poster on this thread mentioning their own experience?

I think they'll use this excuse - that they had a informal verbal agreement with the seller who has now died. I presume this argument won't hold any significance (I hope).

Do they not have photos of the garden/aerial photos from the listing?

What could CF possibly say…”We had a verbal agreement that I could change the boundary once they died.”

Stick to your guns, OP—no exchange until the property is restored to the state it was at the auction.

We had similar selling a relatives property after death. Neighbour claimed dead relative had verbally agreed to assume responsibility for 100% of the roof, and to sign over her half of the garden.

There was nothing on the deeds, nor any other written evidence to attest to this. Solicitors basically told neighbour she was out of order.

So, CF neighbours would have to be able to back up in writing that dead person had offered them the ground.

I would imagine your best argument here would be if an agreement was in place why did they only claim this ground after the neighbour had sadly passed away? Surely they could have started work before then, not waited for the neighbour to pass and then quickly complete the switch before a new buyer could notice or had taken over.

There was a Mumsnet post a while back about someone whose purchase had included a garage and an allotment only to find that they were being used by other people.

The Allotment user said they'd been given it by the previous owners. The garage user said they had permission. This was true in both instances.

However, the items had been included in the sale and the OP managed to get them back reasonably easily. The Allotment user had nothing in writing so was given notice to quit and left. Hopefully the neighbours will respond to a letter from the solicitor. It will cause issues for them if they need to sell their house to have problems with you too. If the fence/wall is on your land, I'd assume you have the right to take it down and put one on the actual boundary so you could always just politely let them know that you'll be taking it down and putting one along the boundary ...

Well there have been cases of CF’s saying the elderly neighbour promised it to them verbally before they got ill/got dementia/pasted away & so they’re just doing what was promised to them. It’s completely BS but means you can neither price or disprove it & the costs involved taking it significantly further force new owners hands into letting it go. Unless family members can corroborate it but even the it’s hard to disprove & CF’s know it.

you wouldn't even need to be a solicitor to drive a truck through that one!

Then OP has to pull out, saying that the boundary line has changed since the auction, and it no longer matches the deeds. She’s pulling out because this was not the state of the property when the hammer fell at auction.

as soon as the landowner passes away, the land becomes a part of the estate and verbal promises are much harder to enforce. From my non legally qualified butpersonal experience, the CF's would have to prove
1 Promise. That the dead person actually said it, ie there is a believable reason for them to have done so or there is solid proof.
2 Reliance. That the CF's had behaved in a way that demonstrated that they had relied on the promise...eg they had moved the fence before the neighbour died or similar
3 Detriment which states that they have lost out because they belived the (provable) promise and had lost out by relying on it.

It looks like this would fall at 1 and there has to be reasonable of all three.

Even googlemaps’ aerial view may be pre-CFs moving the boundary … may be worth grabbing screenshots now as extra supporting info @MummyToBeAgain1 ?

Absolutely - as long as your own buyers don’t mind delaying on the sale/completion of your own property, & you don’t mind losing the £ spent on the purchase so far & happy to pull out. Albeit that is hoping that the sellers is receptive to address/legally assert. Many are under pressure themselves & don’t want to address (further costs/hassle) & find a new buyer where the new boundary stands & no boundary dispute history exists. More so the case I’d have thought when it’s not their own property, sitting empty & perceived as something to administrate. Hopefully not!! But why OP needs to be on it as time passing plays into CF’s hands.

Must be an accidental willy in there somewhere!

I don't think the risks are so much around the neighbour arguing anything. The risks are more around the neighbour - and possibly even the seller - not actually giving any fucks about the paperwork and just taking the land anyway. What's to stop the neighbour either just saying no to reinstating the boundary, or reinstating it now but moving it again the night before exchange, or the night after you get the keys, or when you go away on holiday next year? Reasonable, law abiding people tend to assume others will comply with rules but how do you personally enforce it if they just don't?

OP I think you're thinking about this as largely your seller's problem, but this neighbour could very much become your problem from the day you get the keys. All the things you're expecting the seller to do will become your things to do, and dealing with that when a CF neighbour just says no to them may not be straightforward or cheap.

You've had some amazing posts on this thread. Two that stick out for me is one ages ago that said the rules had changed with land grabs and it's now easier to evict the grabber - I would follow that up urgently and find out what actions you take and what "teeth" you would have these days in a future dispute. Also someone mentioned the fallacy of prior investment. Overall I would suggest you really engage with the possibility that even if the boundary gets restored for 6 weeks to get the sale over the line, that will not be the end of the story. Hopefully I'm wrong, maybe your CF neighbour will get back in his lane and stay there or the law has changed enough to help you, but you should not presume that that is the only or most likely outcome here. You could end up spending a lot more than £10k on future disputes, and lose the land, and still have a dispute on the record that makes it difficult to sell the house, and be stuck living next to someone you're not on speaking terms with

edited for clarity

the BUYER ie the OP shouldn't need to be taking any actions unless they lose their freakin minds totally and decide to continue with the purchase before getting this sorted out. The SELLER still owns the property, the property is not as described in the auction legal pack so right now, the onus is on the seller to fix it. I agree that the buyer should probably be chasing the auction house and her solicitor and if it was me, then I'd definitely need to protect my sanity by getting frequent updates. I haven't read back before posting this but I have a feeling that the OP said that they don't have the purchaser's detail and have to deal via the auction house. Given that the seller would also be paying a fee to the auction house, I'd be wanting an answer from my solicitor AND from the auction house about pulling out of the deal because the property is currently not as described in the legal pack. Not that I would have definitely decided to do so but I'd want to know what my options are.

@godmum56, you don't seem to fully comprehend the risks to the buyer in the above situation.

Antonania is completely correct in what she has posted.

what risks if the the lot is not as described in the legal pack and its a modern auction without purchase at hammer fall? I do agree that the OP should be talking to the auction house.

The is no logic reason for previous, now deceased person to promise strip of land post death. And no agreement …. It fording make sense.
i could see a person allowing neighbor to use garage during life … but the strip of land gift post death makes no sense at all.

The scope for these CF’s to claim they had a verbal agreement with the old owner before they passed away who was happy to informally give them the extra sq metres is probably quite high. Then there’s no paper trail & it was all done allegedly on verbal “goodwill”. Cheeky fkers. I hate the entitlement & brass necks. Hope it goes in your favour OP.

I am under the impression that a 'verbal agreement' with no independent witnesses or a paper trail isn't worth the paper it's not written on!

Any transfer of land needs to be evidenced in writing. Day 1 of property law. They cannot claim to have acquired the land through an oral agreement.

I'm going to post an update end of tomorrow or Monday. I'm STRESSED now. My sol hasn't done anything so I've now got to email everyone to alert them of this situation. I'm working full day today and tomorrow and this needs to be done inbetween.

On the bright side, the estate agent who was doing the house viewings and did the one with us last week agrees that they've changed it and should be putting it down. He said he would pass this 'higher up'.

Auction person isn't answering so waiting for a call back.

Emails sent all around.

Well, I agree. But while normally a verbal agreement is technically binding so there would be an argument to be had, in the case of land verbal agreements are specifically excluded from that. So if they don’t have it in writing there was no agreement, simple as that.

I know nothing about the legalities of your situation but what a fantastic warning you’ve had that the neighbours aren’t to be trusted and that you should keep your distance, and all without having to directly fall out with them 🤞