Hi everyone. My partner and I are FTB's and are really in need of some advice about our purchase.
We started the purchase process for this house in April of 2021. The house was marketed at an asking price of £425,000. We felt the house was worth the asking price at the time given what we had seen and the garden size as well. However, when it the searches came back and our solicitor looked at the titles, it turned out there was about 1/3rd of the garden space did not actually belong to the seller. From gathering historical satellite images, we found that he had extended his garden boundary out about 6 years ago, and belt decking on the entire area, land which was not his. None of this had been declared to us at the start of the property purchase by the seller or the estate agent, as if we had known, I do not think the property would have been able to ask for the £425k price tag, and our offer probably would have maxed out around £410k.
At the time we were still in a position to have benefitted from the stamp duty holiday, which would have been somewhere around £7k. With this issue cropping up, our solicitor advised that we look to get an adverse possession application filed from the seller’s side and see if they can get the land as part of the sale, rather than re-negotiate the price down which we felt the seller would unlikely do anyway. We waited months at this stage, and our mortgage offer also expired, so the original 1.25% rate or something along those lines was lost, and we moved to 1.6%, which still was not too bad. The land registry eventually responded, and that land had then been registered as leasehold by the land registry rather than freehold, and it turns out that this was due to some incompetence on the sellers’ solicitors’ part, as they had filed the application incorrectly, as there was notice periods to wait out, this was a long process, so it took us to around March 22. At this point, our solicitor advised that this is not ideal, and it would be best to get this sorted out before proceeding.
Once again, the seller’s solicitor files the application for freehold adverse possession, correctly this time. We had also been in touch with our MP to try aid the process to see if things could be worked a bit quicker, given how long the land registry had taken last time. We initially heard back that the council had filed a formal objection against the adverse possession application. So, the seller’s solicitor tried entering negotiations with the council to see if they could get a hold of the land. We had a response from our MP, regarding what the council responded to them. They essentially said they would be unwilling to sell that portion of the land to anyone, as it had specific uses, as it forms part of land which connects to a business park at the back of the property. A similar response had gone out to the seller, this was now about 3-4 weeks ago, and we had not heard from the seller or their solicitor. At this stage, we had to renew our mortgage offer again, and are on a rate of around 2.5%. Which has doubled to when we started, but still not in unmanageable territory.
This week (Aug 22) we received a response from the seller’s solicitor. They advised that the council would be unwilling to negotiate the sale of the land. Along with this, the seller is now saying that he wants to re-negotiate the price that we are paying for the property due to market changes over the last year and wants £475,000 as the asking price. We have felt slightly outraged and upset, given the property was misrepresented to us at the start of the process, by both the seller and their estate agent. We understand the market has changed, but equally, our mortgage is about to expire again, and we now would be moving to a rate probably around 4% or 4.5%+ if another rate increase hits next month. The market is also going to start undergoing a bit of a change with the new shift in interest rates, and additional rises on the horizon, as well as the country heading towards recession. We discussed and would possibly be willing to move to an offer of £440,000 at most. The house feels lost to us though, as I feel the seller has been shady from the start, and is now trying to squeeze us for more, when we were going to have to consider renegotiating anyway given the property lost a significant chunk of land from the garden.
Your guy’s advice on the general situation and possibly on how to handle the negotiation would be greatly appreciated, as right now I feel like dropping the purchase altogether due to the frustration, and time wasted. I remain here and ask for advice as this house certainly felt like “the one” for us, which is why we held on for so long, and I think the seller is clearly aware that we love the house.
Thank You All.