Neighbours made driveway over new home’s boundary.

[BraOffPjsOn]

So we’re buying a house and have received the boundary doc.
It shows very clearly where our land would be and we also brought the neighbouring plot’s boundary doc.
When we were there and from Google satellite view you can clearly see they’ve taken a chunk of ‘our’ land to make themselves a driveway (without it they only have a tiny path to their house and no space for a driveway). The solicitor is not giving much advice but I am pushing.

what would others do/suggest?

"Because I don’t know much about it and if it would cause us a huge headache if we tried to sell then I need to be aware..."

No, that isn't the point of posting on Mumsnet

The point is that you INSTRUCT your solicitor to sort it out, or at least to find out the facts. That's what you are paying them a small fortune for and it's why you can sue them if they give you negligent advice.

You can't sue anybody on Mumsnet

That's why you rely on your solicitor's advice and nobody else's - you can sue them when they are wrong

People can ask whatever they like on mumsnet and for whatever reason
Theres no rules of engagement

and Surely if people pop on a thread they do so as they are interested and happy to help or learn from it.

It’s all fine OP

You need to get some measurements and a 'to scale' diagram. The lines vary between photos so it's not clear what's relevant & what isn't - cut it down to 3 photos & delete the rest as it's too confusing to comment realistically.

I think I would be more worried what kind of neighbours you’re going to get. If you don’t mind what’s there and it’s been there a while, hopefully they aren’t CFs. Personally I would want to get it sorted in my mind before rather than after.

This.

I would back out

In the diagram it even looks, literally, like a red flag!

Speak to your solicitor, let him deal with it.

Change solicitor while you are at it.
He or she should definitely have suggestions and advice on this.

I had an issue with my previous house.

Solicitor was clear and to the point, dont buy

I’ll say it for a 3rd time…
You don’t have to lose the land as everyone is suggesting. Rather than getting into a massive boundary dispute, deeds just need to be altered to say your neighbour has right of access over it to get to their home. Plus something similar on their deeds.
If you love the house you’ll find a way to overcome the situation and it can be done in an amicable way. Meet with the neighbours, have a discussion 🤷‍♀️

Your Solicitor needs to be pro-active on this? Or do you have a person doing the conveyancing in a large bundle?

This is a serious issue and should be sorted before you sign anything. A Solicitor will have all the paperwork to hand and you should be informed of any consequences that might arise now or in the future. This is where you will find out the difference in what you are paying for.

The plan shows their path/driveway as being on the actual corner. However, it isn't. They don't have the access of the other side of the corner. This makes me wonder if the plans themselves are actually inaccurate and the driveway got built at a better angle.

I also want to know about the pink triangle and the dotted line that goes to number 9. It's either a sewage pipe across your garden or they have a right of way and you share the pink bit with them.

Of course it could also be that the deceased relative just agreed or did a cash sale and no one ever got the plans updated.

You can see on the 2 red outlined photos that the boundary between the two houses isn't the same

I would pull out. To much of a nightmare. Unless current owner sorts it out. To much hassle to be fair. Plus then your dealing with an angry neighbour for the rest of your time there. Then the problem is left to you when you sell. Cause you will.

Back out until its sorted. Current owners need to sort it

Then why did you post about it??.. if you're not going to take any action or if you don't see the big deal with people taking stuff that doesn't belong to them...Why post.?? You wanted advice and the strangers on the Internet is giving it .

This. Never buy a house with any kind of boundary issue. The chances are the neighbours will be horrific. If they have the cheek to do this, then they are not going to listen to reason. Your solicitor is presumably waiting for you to realise it, not “sort it out”. There is no sorting it out without pissing off your potential neighbours.

The reason the seller hasn’t said anything to you is if there was a dispute, they would have to declare it on sale. This is a dispute waiting to happen. Do not buy this house

Even if you don't mind and buy the house anyway, you are likely to find your house much harder to see when the time comes - because disputed boundaries always come.up on deeds etc. So if the neighbours are willing to pay for the redrawing of both sets of deeds, fair enough, if not don't buy!

Going by the pictures I’d say your back garden fence (on the right) isn’t exactly aligned with the boundary plan it looks to be encroaching the neighbours garden slighty. Personally I’d go back to the estate agent asking them to check with the neighbours and see what the agreement was, ask for a fair price reduction and the neighbours and sellers to arrange a change to the titles. I wouldn’t want to fall out with the neighbours if I really like the house, but I also wouldn’t want to be having to tidy up the boundary deeds either

My sister has been through a boundary dispute and it was awful. And expensive (covered by insurance thankfully).

I think you need to be quite forceful with your solicitor. I’d want to know if it’s been encroached on, when, how and what led to it. Hopefully it’s nothing but you don’t want to be stuck with have CF neighbours when you’re in, or have a falling out when you’ve moved in. If it’s all simple and above board no problem, but not unreasonable to ask. I’d get it sorted beforehand.

The cynic in me says if they are CFs they may try to take more and it will not be a nice experience for you. I’d want to know.

There would need to be a massive decrease in price for me to buy in that situation.

Ruthless, piss-taking neighbours and boundary disputes can be a nightmare. You can spend money on redecorating, fixing a house up, but you can't really buy better neighbours. It will very likely haunt you in future house sales, and you'll have to declare a boundary dispute.

We had a nightmare a few years ago when the neighbour at the bottom of our garden took the boundary fence down and started putting a new one in about 2 feet INTO our garden. Thankfully I was home that day (off sick) and was able to ring DH in a panic saying why is the neighbour in our garden. His argument was that his deeds showed that ourselves and the next door neighbour had got 2 feet of his garden so he was taking it back, but according to our deeds there was no such thing. We ended up having to get solicitors/land registry involved along with the people next door, had no bloody fence with 2 dogs and children, and it was awful. In the end, he backed down when he realised that we weren't letting it happen without a fight... but it ruined a previously good relationship and cost us well over £10k that we hadn't needed to spend.

I would tread very carefully here, OP. And make sure that your solicitor has everything made very clear in writing before you complete on any sale.

This is exactly the reason you pay solictors thousands of pounds. They need to flag this with the sellers. I would threaten to pull out definitely.

If the Land Registry plan shows the land belongs to your plot, but the neighbour has built a driveway over it, that’s a potential boundary dispute.

You need clarification before exchange otherwise you inherit the problem. Your solicitor absolutely should be raising this with the seller’s solicitor. The seller must explain what’s happened, whether the neighbour has any rights, and whether there’s been any dispute. An they need to foot the bill for correcting the land registry is necessary.

This is standard conveyancing. If your solicitor won’t push it, insist they raise a formal enquiry. You do not want to complete and then discover you’ve bought a boundary fight. If you don't settle this now and sometime in the future you try to sell, you could be left with the bill to resolve it and it may not be cheap and my erode the value of the plot.

The major issue here is that (assuming you have a mortgage) the mortgage company offer is based on the legal title, not the “real‑world” land on the selling photos. A mortgage valuation is carried out on the plot as shown on the Land Registry title plan. If the neighbour has taken a strip of that land and a strip for a drive sounds like a substantial size, the buyer is not actually getting what the lender thinks they’re lending against, the lender is not getting the security they believe they have and the valuer may have valued a larger plot than the buyer will physically own. The lender could refuse to release funds if the discrepancy is discovered before completion
Lenders are extremely twitchy about anything that affects:

• Boundaries
• Access
• Encroachments
• Rights of way
• Adverse possession

Because all of these affect resale value, which is their security. And the neighbour, having gone to the expense of building a drive, has spent a lot of money and is unlikely to give it up without a fight. That fight needs to be the current owners and not yours as it will be very costly.

And this becomes a viscous circle because if you do not address it now, then when you come to sell it on, the buyers may raise it and your home could be devalued.

The only caveat here is if the neighbours have recently purchased the land from the seller of the house you are buying and it has not yet hit the land registry but in this case the vendors solicitor should have declared this for the reasons stated above - so I doubt this has happened and I think its a boundary dispute.