Buying a 'landlocked' property?? Adverse possession?

[goingdownsouth]

I wasn't sure if I should put this is legal but I have a solicitor looking at it so I'm looking for opinions or experiences.

The deeds of the property we want to buy shows that they don't own a few feet of the garden. The nearest part to the road. The garden goes up to the road and it's as if a space ( only on the plan) was left with the intention of putting a footpath in but it never happened. There is no fence or boundary and you'd just assume it was all garden if you saw it
It is in a small rural village so no one noticed. It's not been formerly adopted by the council. No one knows who actually owns it. It's been like that for 10nyears or more.

Our lovely Solicitor suggests we ask the seller to provide an indemnity insurance should any legal action for right of access and possibly apply for adverse possession

Or drop out

Dropping out of the sale would be easiest but the houses in our price bracket rarely appear in the village so that's a last resort

It's an unusual situation but I thought I would ask if anyone had come across anything like this before?

Do you need access over this small strip of ground, or could it be claimed by someone else without depriving you of access? I’m guessing the latter going by your thread title.

I suppose my own preference would be to take whatever legal steps are necessary and to reduce my offer by whatever that would cost. It would seem a shame to lose out for something which might never be a problem but then I suppose if unresolved it could be a problem for you when you come to sell.

Indemnity insurance for this kind of thing isn’t usually that expensive - dropping out seems extreme if you like the house.

I think indemnity is quite common, but definitely get legal advice.You aren't in some crazy area of London or anything where a few feet would be costly??

We need access. It's a strip of land the size of a footpath. It looks like it ought to be owned/ maintained by the council but most home owners just see to look after it themselves.
It's rural so no one cares.
Except our solicitor! Who thinks it's a bad idea

Get the sellesr to get indemnity, they usually don't cost very much

Standard is for seller to pay for indemnity. Usually with these type of indemnity policies, you get stuck in a catch-22 whereby applying for adverse posession/first resgistration means that your indemnity policy is invalidated, so it relies on you keeping quiet for ever more, and not trying to get the land added to your title.

However, it is possible to get a policy that still covers you while you go through the land registry process - we got one by speaking to an underwriter at Aviva. If you go down that route, you'll want to get the vendors to write a Statuatory Declaration, saying that they've been treating the land as their own for xx years etc (your solicitor can advise and arrange this via the vendors' solicitors). You'll need this, along with aerial photos (preferably old ones) to get a bespoke indemnity policy, and again if you approach the Land Registry.

Alternatively, you can rely on the standard indemnity, and the need to keep schtum for evermore, secure that it will pay out in the unlikely event anyone tries to claim the land.

In our situation, we our title plan missed out a triangle of land at the side of the house (it was where a garage had been, and when the farmer split the farmhouse title from the field, he forgot to register that piece of land with either the field, or the house). We got the statuatory declarations, and the bespoke indemnity policy (actually cost the same as the standard one we were offered) and a few years after moving in, we notified the insurance company, and started the process with the Land Registry. On the Land Registry's advice, we didn't go down the adverse posession route, but on the 'first registration' route (I think administratively it's easier for them!) and the red line on our plan has been updated to include this triangle in our title.