The dreaded shared driveway.

[Mammybee]

Shared driveway to 2 detached houses, ours and our neighbours. We bought the area of land together 8 years ago, built our houses roughly 3 years ago.

Neighbours house is directly in front of the shared driveway where our house veers off to the right.

It is a quite a wide drive and it was only short of half a metre to make it two separate driveways (bloody planners).

The thing is our neighbours have basically taken the drive and made it their own. Yes myself and my husband drive over it everyday but I feel as though it is theirs...

They have grasssed a large area of it which they've discussed fencing off. Added their postbox to the fence at start of entrance (which is technically our side of the property) along with hanging baskets with no flowers

I'm so confused over this issue. My husband tells me not to worry about it but it really frustrates me and I'm sure it will affect us selling the house on in future.

Does anyone have any advice? We really do get on with these neighbours so I don't want to lay down the law.

I think they've assumed because it was right in front of their house that they own it but surely they can't be so stupid because we did get a solicitor to sort land ownership etc. so are they just trying to take advantage...

Can you add a post box too?

Ie make it more yours as well?

I think that if they have put something on your land then that will become 'their land' after a period of time. Or something like that. So you really need to sort it out because it would affect your sale value.

Thanks for replies.
They've put their postbox tight to the start of fence even though our house number comes before theirs. So yes I think I may add our postbox down there but it will look silly that numbers are in wrong order!

Corny - that's what I've been trying to tell my husband but he thinks as long as we all own it they can't officially take it for themselves. I'm going to track down deeds for house/ land today.

Think I may make the excuse to discuss land ownership with them on the pretence that we are getting the house valued.

They are nice people but over the years we've established that they are very money orientated - we buy something and they buy something similar but better. Little do they know most of our stuff is second hand

Really don't want to get into an argument and if it was just a bit of land at the side of the house I wouldn't care but the fact that its the driveway and will affect the value of our house massively is a big deal.

they actually sound like they may be taking advantage of your good nature a bit here

I am just buying a house with a shared driveway. We made our solicitor look very carefully into the rights of ownership as looking at the driveway it is very unclear. If there was an issue (luckily not) we would have made the vendors sort it out before exchange. So my advice would be to sort it now, then you do have something legally binding to show buyers if you/they ever want to sell in the future.

One of you must surely own the driveway and the other has a right-of-way over it.

Nophone - Don't think this is the case. We bought the land together. I can't remember at any point signing anything that just gives us right of way. Can't find any paperwork regarding driveway so I've left message for solicitor to phone me back.

This is a nightmare. Just had my friend round and discussed situation with her. She always assumed driveway was theirs.

Ah well, if they assumed wrongly, then perhaps they will be amenable to sorting it out?

I think you need to get it sorted as amicably as possible. If there was a fair way of dividing it up then I would go down that route. I would be really, really wary of buying a property with shared anythihng!

why did they assume it was theirs if you shared the cost though?

I think the friend was independent, not the OP's neighbour.

Have a wander over to the gardenlaw forum for rights of way here and see if anything similar can be found.

You will need to know the exact wording on the deeds as rights of way can be worded in lots of different ways.

If you can't put your hands on your deeds you can order a copy from Land Registry and a copy of your neighbours.

Can you suggest some joint stylish landscaping so you can put your stamp on it and it look cohesive, maybe swapping the confusing post boxes and get matching numbers, paintwork, pots etc?

You are right to get it sorted.
We are buying a house at the moment but of those we saw it wasn't actually our favourite house. The nicest house we saw had access over someone elses drive/private road and that was the main thing that made the most beautiful and perfect house a no go for us.
It was so gorgeous too

I agree..

I would get it sorted as I know that it would put me off buying your house if the arrangement was at all ambiguous - in both a legal and practical way.

Thanks everybody. I'm so glad I didn't just accept my husbands attitude of 'On paper we all own it so what does it matter what they think is theirs'.

Getting the legal stuff sorted now. It definitely is owned by ourselves and neighbour. Even the solicitors says it needs to be looked at in more detail.

All sorted now. Spoke to neighbours and solicitor and its all been sorted out legally. The neighbours had just assumed that they were entitled to take the land that was in front of their house but this was not the case thank goodness.

What was their response??