How do you know who owns the roof?

[Showy]

I know it sounds ridiculous and is frankly, dull.

We live mid terrace and originally they were all two up two down. If you stand at the back and look at them they all have single storey bathroom/kitchen extensions but with various roofing. Ours is flat and felted, next door one way is flat and fibre glass something or other, the other side is a tiles, sloped affair. It looks pretty obvious who owns which roof as they extend from the relevant house. Annoyingly, the actual extensions are not so simple. Our extension is L-shaped and the I part is covered by our flat roof. The _ part is under next door's tiled roof which also covers her kitchen, hall and bathroom.

The problem is that her roof is leaking substantially and we are having problems in our kitchen. So who has responsibility for the roof? The deeds don't say and when we moved in we had to get an indemnity policy for rear access as who owns what wrt the yard at the back was never established despite extensive searching. We are happy to go halves or something if it stops the water running down the kitchen wall and into my plug sockets. The snow has really exacerbated the problem. The woman next door, who is a landlady btw and living a long way away now, is aware of the problem but hasn't fixed the roof. So if she refuses, is there any clear way of establishing who owns what?

Is everybody asleep. See, dull.

Oh dear. Good luck, OP!

Sounds like it is legally unclear whose responsibility it is, therefore if you want it fixed you will probably have to pay yourself.

Surely a good solicitor would have advised you to get the boundaries sorted before buying.

As I said a few times, you can't sort the boundary issues. Hence the indemnity policy we took out.

We can't pay ourselves. We don't have that kind of money.

I think we all work on the same principle. The original houses are ours and we have stuff in all our deeds showing this. The extensions/yard are complicated and they belongs to nobody/all of us and we all have indemnity policies as far as possible. When anything has happened that needs fixing in the yard, we all chip in and we all work together to fix it. We had some leftover shingle after doing some work and we fixed an area of the yard. Next door but one was doing some work and had excess fence posts so he donated them to the yard. To name a couple of examples. It works. The houses in our bit of the town are all like it. Doesn't affect house sales or anything else really. It's just how the place is built. I've never had to ask a neighbour to do significant repairs though. Hopefully, we can work it out.

Op it sounds like ?our neighbour has a flying freehold. If your solicitor only took an indemnity policy for access issues then they haven't done their job properly.

The problem with a flying freehold is that under English land law the only way to enforce positive covenants ie make your neighbour spend money out is with a lease or deeds of covenant protected by restrictions.

Unfortunately for you I don't think you'll be able to make your neighbour do anything, you probably don't even have sufficient rights for access onto her property ie the roof to do the works.

You need to get onto the solicitor that bought it in for you and check the terms of the indemnity policy.

Thank you. I think our plan of action is to talk to the current tenants. I know the previous tenants had problems with damp and with the state of the roof, our builder reckons there's no way it's not affecting the property next door as well as ours. So, if they can tell their landlady it's affecting her property too, surely she's obliged to do something about it? Like I said, she's a really nice lady and we had a problem once where her boiler malfunctioned and the first sign of it was leaking water into our property. The minute she knew, she got on the phone to an emergency boiler repair company and offered to pay all damages to us (we refused btw). It's just a big job and I don't want to go in all guns blazing, nor do I want to go into it without knowing if there is some sort of legal rule for this kind of situation.

I was thinking if it is leaking into your house then surely it must be leaking into theirs too. So yes - investigating via her tenants is a good start and they have nothing to lose except any damp.

Whereabouts are you OP? I'm guessing the terraced houses shared toilet facilities in the back yard area when they were first built and before people wanted their own indoor bathrooms so the yards were communal. I can't see much on your photo as it's too dark.

Exactly wowfudge. The toilets are still there. Well sort of. We use them as individual coal/wood stores. The yard is communal. Historically, it belonged to t'big house up the road but belongs to the terrace now and has done for 100 years. The individual toilets and gardens are in the deeds of each house.

Here, in daylight. DS in the doorway. Plus a picture of the row of external toilets. Facing the toilets are individual gates into our private gardens. It's a quirky set up but means you get a parking space on a private yard and garden which isn't usual for a terrace here. Most are one or the other. Or neither.

I think I may be even more confused now! So NDN's extension roof level is higher than yours. Does your property internally (the ground floor extension) end roughly where your drainpipe is to the left of the door on the photo? Does NDN's roof overlap the internal dividing wall of the extensions? Where does the downpipe from the guttering (left of square upstairs window) go? Looks as though you have a tarpaulin on your extension roof but that there may be something wrong with front edge of NDN's roof where it overhangs your extension - not sure from the photo.

Sorry for all the questions.

Just had a closer look at the photo of the rooves on a pc. I think I can see what the problem may be - it looks as though the flashing where the tiled extension roof meets the original back wall of the house is not properly secured into a mortar joint. If you look, it appears to have pulled away a little way in to left. This means that rain water will be getting in at that point above your kitchen, maybe not every time it rains as it could depend on the wind direction too. Given the set up with part of your kitchen being under the tiled pitched roof then I would say it would be reasonable to share the cost of repairs unless your deeds state the tiled roof belongs entirely to your neighbour. That would not be a big or expensive job to put right.

Whilst someone is up there, the join where your flat roof meets your NDN's extension should be checked.

A roofer has been up and checked. We know what the problem is. Her roof needs the flashing sorted out, you are right. It also needs new felt and the pitch is below the minimum for the type of roof. It is not a small job. Our roofer (as I said up thread, yes we have a tarp on at the moment well spotted, we are replacing our felt roof with a single membrane thingy) says that he can do some basic repairs to the flashing above our extension and stop the immediate problem with lots of water getting in (we would pay for this), but realistically with the state of her roof, the water will carry on getting in until she does major repairs and with it overhanging our extension it will affect our property eventually.

Oh and to answer your questions. Yes her roof is higher. Hers is pitched, ours is flat. Yes our extension ends where that drainpipe is. Yes her roof overlaps our internal dividing wall but only by a couple of inches (the leak just there is BAD). Not sure which downpipe you mean. Ours runs water off our flat roof. It was put in about 10 days ago. Hers dumps water into her guttering I think.

Well done btw. The two main leaks are exactly where you're seeing the problems. That bit of flashing and the bit where it overlaps are causing the biggest problems. To us anyway.

Showy, when you say the roof overlaps your dividing wall by a few inches, you mean the dividing wall between your kitchen and NDN's bathroom, right?

There's a much bigger overlap further towards the original part of your house, with the edge of NDN's roof being quite a way over on your side of the dividing wall between the original houses, right?

I think wowfudge is referring to the downpipe from the roof of the main house, where there's a change in the colour of the bricks too. I presume that's where the dividing wall between the main parts of the houses is?

OP in your position I would get a written report (just a list of what is wrong) and breakdown of repair costs from your roofer and contact the owner of next door.

Spindelina - have a look at the OP's diagram and compare with the photo; part of the OP's kitchen is under the pitched roof!

wowfudge yes, that's what I thought. I was a bit thrown by OP saying that there was only a couple of inches overlap.

I was answering fudge's question about whether the ndn's roof slightly overlaps the dividing wall of the extensions.

"Does NDN's roof overlap the internal dividing wall of the extensions?" was the q.

I was also confused by fudge asking about the downpipe "left of square upstairs window". The square window is ndn's. Ours is rectangular. Grey downpipe is at the property boundary and is ndn's. It dumps water to the guttering at the front of the extension.

Okay - the smaller window upstairs is your NDN's then; yours looked square to me. With the photo and your diagram I can work out what you mean. Hope you can get it sorted.