Issues with access

[Manoodledo]

We're in the process of buying a house. Entry date set for 4 weeks' time, our house sold and moving out in less than 2 weeks. Just discovered there is an issue with access to the parking spaces at the rear of the property. The parking area is accessed via a side street and through the carpark of a neighbouring development of flats. We've just found out that the access route through the carpark is owned by the builders and they have the right to terminate this access should they want to refurbish or build further on the site of the flats. The parking is one of the big selling points of the property as off-street parking in the area is pretty rare. It's unlikely that the builders would terminate the access, given that the development is about 20 years old. But what if they do? And even if they don't, if we want to sell the property on again in the future this would be an issue then and could seriously devalue the property. Help! Not sure what to do, if anything. Really don't want to give up the house at this late stage, but worried this could turn into a real issue. Feeling pretty stressed (I'm also nearly 7 months pregnant, which doesn't help). Just wanted to ask how much of a problem other people would find this. Would you walk away?

We had something similar (land required for access to our garage is half the required width owned by a neighbour, half the width by the council) - it was a major stress, I can't deny it. BUT the house was the dream house, perfect in almost every way, so we persevered. Eventually we got an easement from the council to say we could use there half and the neighbours give us verbal permission to use the other half of the width we need to drive on. In the future new neighbours may revoke this permission, so we negotiated the loss of value from not having access off the asking price (£20k (a value determined by the estate agent), which we split between us and the vendor, so as not to lose the sale).

We don't intend on selling (at all), and the pros of the house well outweighed this issue. However, there are options (indemnity insurance may be an option, it wasn't for us for a number of reasons), and you have to balance the pros and cons.

You have my sympathies though, it was a huge stress.
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Thanks MyAngels. I'm not sure if we'd be able to negotiate the loss of value off the asking price as we've already been lucky enough to get the house for way under the asking price as the sellers had bought another house and really wanted to move. The fact that we paid less than the value of the property (we're in Scotland and the home report valued it at 25k more than we are paying) might balance out a future loss of value if we do sell later though.