Garden not on the house deeds

[RJ22]

Good afternoon all,

We are looking for a house to buy.

We found one property that meets our criteria, but the agent has advised that the garden is not currently on the house Deeds.

Apparently it was built in the 19th century and the garden was never attached to the deeds.

Does anyone had a similar experience and how it was sorted?

Is this something the seller can sort out before selling? so on our offer we can inform that we require that the garden is attached on the house deeds in order to go ahead with the sale?

We are first time buyers, the buying process for a property looks already challenging to us and we would like to keep things simple, but the property has so much potential that we are not sure if we should just put this one aside because of this issue with the garden.

Thank you so much for all your help in advance.

Any suggestion/advice will be welcome :)

Rita

I’d agree you heed this sorting or the house sold without garden.

We’ve just been through this when buying a house to parcels of land had been bought at different stages all legal work done at the time but not registered properly with Land Registry. Initially we went that bothered as looked like where the septic tank is and a path behind the house. But turned out to be half of the garage and kitchen built on that land.

Was sorted took about 4 months on the expedited service of Land Registry. Needed owner contacting and OS surveyors to site visit. Cost us around £1k in extra legal fees.

I wouldn't touch this unless that garden has been sorted. To me the fact that this property has sold twice in the last 10 years and no-one's solicitor has attached the garden in the deeds screams it can't be attached for some reason.

There is no way I would risk buying a house with the garden not on the deeds.

Either someone already owns it and won't let it go, or the land is unregistered but that should have been fairly easy to sort out the last 2 times this was sold.

I wouldn’t touch this either until the garden has been sorted by the seller at their expense.

I have emailed the agent asking to clarify

I wouldn’t put any weight on the agents answer/clarification to this. Their agenda is to sell the property and get their commission. They’re not legally qualified to deal with this issue. You need a conveyancing solicitor to deal with this. Do not do anything based on the EAs assurances or advice.

Thank you everyone for all your suggestions and advice. I'm so grateful for all the information I gathered.

I will follow up the input and when the time comes,make an offer with the contingent that the garden issue is sorted. If the seller doesn't accept I will move on and look for another property.

I did raise some of your comments to the EA but I can see indeed that he doesn't have much more to add "Do you know what is the reason why the seller didn’t do it? It seems odd that it have never been sort it specially because the property was sold in 2015 and before in 2009 and nobody attach it.
Additionally do you know if the garden although not in the house deeds belongs to the seller and they have a separate deeds for the garden or who owns that piece of land?"
His reply was "Probably over 75% of the houses of this age have never had the gardens officially put on their deeds but it is not usually an issue in this area and its just personal thoughts if you want it done. I can think of two houses just off the top of my head which we are selling with the same situation. All it was in this instance, the owner wanted people to be aware as one potential buyer flagged it up as an issue for them"

So for now I won't do any additional questions, and when the lockdown lift, I will get the ball running and see if the seller sorts it or if I move on.

Thank you very much :)

I’d be concerned about “the garden is yours to use* because having a right or permission to use something is not the same as owning it.

The fact another potential buyer has walked away is also a concern. It also says to me that the buyers are not prepared or not able to add the garden to the deeds because otherwise why haven’t they already?

Unless you really love this house and it’s priced accordingly I wouldn’t spend much time or money looking into the garden issue. There are plenty of other lovely houses out there.

Interesting he didn’t answer your question in any way shape nor form op, that was a complete non answer, so he body swerved it.

Another one saying do not trust what the agent has to say about the situation. The agent just wants to sell the house. I looked at a property with a complicated garden/parking situation and the agent was talking utter bollocks about the legal side of things (he was unaware that I grew up on the same street so knew the situation beforehand)

I've lived in a few houses of that age and older, and so has DH and his family, and all of them had gardens on the deeds!
Including our current house - we have all the documents from 1900s about land being purchased, then divided, then houses being built one by one, each on their original plot!
People used to proceed in the same logical way as they do now, buy a plot, then build a house on it, not build a row of houses them look for land to attach to them legally which will be their garden. I'd say it's not normal at all, and wouldn't be trusting the agent who said 75 % of houses of that time don't have their garden on the deeds

The sellers have already lost one sale due to this op. That’s something the agent has told you. If this was simple the seller would have sorted it.

I suspect you’ll get the same answer, the garden can’t be put on the deeds. Likely as it belongs to someone.

We encountered a similar issue as FTBs and walked away.

We had an offer accepted on a house we wanted to buy, but when the initial LR docs came back from the solicitors searches, I noticed the garden on the title plan was significantly shorter than the garden that supposedly came with the house. It transpired there was a strip of land running behind the row of houses that wasn’t originally owned by the terrace, although all the houses were using the portion behind their official boundary as part of their garden. Most of the other houses in the row had had their part added to their deeds over time, but it hadn’t happened for ‘our’ house.

The vendors made lots of noises about it never being an issue and they’d used it for years, etc. However, they weren’t willing to pursue adverse possession and get it sorted prior to sale, and we didn’t want to always live with the risk of the real owner rocking up and claiming their land, so we walked away.
We lost a few hundred pounds in solicitors fees for the work they’d done on it before we pulled out, but it ended up being some of the best money we’ve ever spent - about 6 months later we bought a much nicer, bigger house with a garden that wasn’t owned by someone else!