Title deeds - possibly incorrect anyone else had this?

[ConfusedOhConfused]

We bought our property on the basis of the title deeds showing the total area of land we owned as well as the house.

At the rear of the property this included a bay to park in. The council has since informed us that the bay is public highway and anyone can park in it. It is next to a public road.

We checked with land regsitry, they say the bay is ours on our deeds but it may have been registered incorrectly by the builders. But until it was amended then the bay was ours.

The council aren't making any effort to have the title deeds amended and if the council are correct then my deeds are wrong. They say they over-ride any owner rights. I have contacted a solictor who advises me it is probably a litigation case and I could be due compensation for buying a property based on the deeds which may be incorrect.

Has anyone ever had any experience of incorrect title deeds. The house was built in 1992 and the bay was deemed public highway under the highways act in 1990.

Help me please!

not sure but can you check out the planning permission documents. Unallocated parking provision may have been a stipulation of pp but the land deeds may not have been correctly altered once the house was built. (Our deeds still show the sheds which occupied the site before the house was built)

If it is public highway you still own the land underneath, but subject to the right to park for the public. So the deeds may not actually be wrong, they just don't tell the whole story.

You might have a case. It might cost more to bring the case than the compensation you would get if you won.

Any special reason why you want this sorted out?

I own the land to the centre of the road behind but this is coloured in yellow on my plans which means the road is public highway and maintained by the council as stated in my deeds.

We are looking to put our house on the market in the few months as my husband's job is about to relocate us and if the deeds are incorrect then it could hold up my sale.

I wouldn't want someone to go through what I have been through where you think you are getting something you are not and I don't want to lie if someone asks me about it.

My neighbour parks his big works van in it so when I look out my kitchen window I see the van. Sigh.

I also need to know if I paid over the odds

You'd need a surveyor to assess whether that makes a material difference to the value . Your mortgage company won't necessarily have included it in their valuation anyway if it looks to be part of the highway as they don't double check deeds.

Our mortgage is a lot less than the value of the house so I'm not too worried about that side of things, I just hate the fact that we had our solicitor check it out before we bought the property as our garage is at the back of the property too and as we had two cars we wanted one in the garage and the other in the bay. The previous owners believed the bay to be theirs but we wanted it confirmed. It was in the deeds so we were happy.

It is like buying a property with a garden only to find out that the bottom half of it is public property and anyone can play in it.

Plus it caused huge embarrasment when we asked the van guy to move his hideous van.

The relevant legal check is a highways search. This is not one of the normal searches people do, but I would have expected an agreement relating to the adoption of the roads to be noted on your deeds/ in your local authority search, which is a normal search. The adoption agreement would spell out the boundaries of the public highway, but the search would also show that the rear road was adopted. In that case your solicitor might not have bought (at your expense) a copy of the adoption agreement to read, and so wouldn't have found out about the bay. Your "loss" is loss of amenity (the view of the van) and the cost of a freehold parking space - not that much? As LIZS says, you need an agent to put a price on it.

You don't need to lie when you sell. Just say the rear parking bay is public - your buyers have the same right to park as van man, they just need to get there first.

Will check my paperwork re the searches, I had a really good solicitor (or so I thought) we even had to have mining searches done etc

Thank you for your help.