Has anyone bought land from a neighbour?

[IamwhoIsayIam]

I'm looking to buy a tiny piece of land from my neighbour - probably no more than 1m x 1m square - its right opposite my kitchen window, it will square off my plot.

Neighbours are happy to sell as it is nearer our house than theirs and they never use it. Can we buy/sell and update our deeds and land registry without use of solicitors? Has anyone done this?

Legal costs would end up more than the value of the land.

Even if you could do it yourself, why would you expect your neighbour sign off on some non professional messing around with their title deeds ?

I certainly wouldn't. The whole process might be done incorrectly leading to a conveyancing mess when either party came to sell their house.

@GasPanic - I feel like you have missed the point. It is a mutual decision where both parties are happy with the arrangement but want to avoid the cost of solicitors and yes any future conveyancing problems.

My neighbour has 'signed off' on the idea of selling and registering a partial title transfer - all of which we can do ourselves via the gov portal - I'm just wondering if anyone has every done it themselves before and any pitfalls of the process.

You can do it yourselves but it’s always worth considering using a conveyancer
And if your neighbour’s property is mortgaged you’re going to need their lender’s consent and if they do then they often insist that a conveyancer is used - so check that first before thinking further re DIY conveyancing
Transfer (of part)

Are the deeds even accurate to 1m? I wonder if a determined boundary might be a way to achieve this? I guess would depend on the relative sizes of the plots to the land to be transferred. You'll need proper conveyancing solicitor advice either way, plus the mortgage issue for the person selling.

My neighbour doesn't have a mortgage so that is not a consideration at least.

This might be a thick question but I'm not actually sure in this circumstance what a conveyancer would do other than register the partial transfer of title which we can do ourselves.

Can anyone explain what the conveyancer will do? I don't want a mess further down the line when one of us comes to sell so want to do it right.

As long as there are no covenants or similar on the land, you may be fine. I would do a half way house approach, maybe ask a solicitor to put a simple document in place which states you both agree to the transfer on a particular date etc. Both sign and date it. You can split the costs of the solicitor between you, should not be a huge amount.

@Schloss - thank you that is the most sensible suggestion. We can then document that along with the land transfer and the receipt of payment.

The 'land' we are discussing is part of what was a communal area shared between a row of terraced houses which has all been parcelled up piece meal. It probably all made sense to the residents needs at the time of the splitting in the 1960's but could be improved now.

We are talking tiny bits of land - think about the size of a hen-coop which may well have been why it was retained with one neighbour at the time of the land titles being originally divided!

I am sure you have already downloaded both the title registers from land registry for both properties, if not that is where you will find any covenants etc, as long as your neighbours are showing as the registered owners you should not have a problem. If for any reason there is a problem with adding the land to your register, you could always register it as a seperate interest, I very much doubt you would ever sell and just keep a m2 piece of land, so they could be sold together, if that makes sense!

Does it show on the title deeds/land registry. I’d just move the fence and say nothing if either of you sell (I’ve done similar). Such a small amount of land.
We bought a sizeable piece of land from a neighbour and the fees were more than the land itself 😣

Tiny or not, I wouldn’t consider doing it DIY, I’d use a conveyancing solicitor for peace of mind. If you do it yourselves you’d need to find out about any convenants on the land, and if you or your neighbour have a mortgage on your respective properties, you’d need to get the permission of the mortgage lender - who may well insist you use a solicitor. I think doing it yourself is a recipe for trouble if either of you decide to sell.

I’m a solicitor (I’ve never done conveyancing) and I recently bought a small bit of land off a neighbour. I did it all myself with the guidance of the land registry who were very helpful. If the person selling the land to you has a mortgage they’ll need lender permission to amend the title deeds (and most lenders will want a solicitor to have looked over it and confirmed that there is no detriment to the value of the property).

However, if there’s no mortgage lender involved I’d probably have a bash at it myself even without being legally trained. The land registry were super helpful over the phone and when the papers were submitted and needed amending they were very prescriptive as to what needed to be done. They do have form for things ‘slipping through the net’ though so chasing them regularly is needed.

If you are buying this you should cover all legal costs.
Given the size of it, it's unlikely to be worth it imo.

I think you can quite easily do it yourself but you might need someone to do you a new set of compliant plans. I understand often DIY plans are rejected by the land registry as they don’t meet the required standards. I’m sure it’s possible to get it right but we paid a few hundred quid to a surveyor to draw up compliant plans.

Your neighbour needs a solicitor. You would ideally have one to register your purchase as you may come unstuck if you try and do it alone. Even if you choose not to use a solicitor you still need to get your ID verified for the land registry application forms

Their time frames are still backlogged from covid. Things haven't slipped through the net they just sit in a massive queue waiting for someone to bother looking at it. 2/3 year delays are not uncommon on complicated transactions

We sold some land to our neighbours. We had a couple of acres adjoining their house/garden, with an orchard and pond at the top nearest their house. They’d started digging out the pond and fencing it off, assuming that it was theirs. When we showed them the deeds from when we’d bought the land (as we’d done this separately to buying our house), and they rechecked their deeds, they realised their mistake. We offered to sell that part to them, as we were using the land for horses and sheep so that section wasn’t much use to us. We agreed a price that was mutually agreeable and then both completed a land transfer document from the Land Registry. All very smooth and cost nothing more than the transfer fee, which was quite small if I recall (this was about 12 years ago).

Oh, and just to add to the above, we sold our house two years ago and there was absolutely no issue with the deeds.

I wouldn’t with any formalities. You never know what happens if you or they sell the house. My friend bought a house and they had that problem with the neighbour as the neighbour pretty much claimed back a tiny bit of land and pretended that it was theirs all the way and it was never given to the previous owners. The result was that my friend had to bring in lawyers to get it back. For my friend wasn’t a big issue as they are wealthy enough but the neighbour had also to get one to represent themselves. In my opinion, the worst is that they are now two neighbours that they hate each other which is never great!

Please can I ask for anyone who went through this, how long it took for the lender to give consent? No one can give me a rough ball park, and I know it will vary from lender to lender but can’t work out if it’s days, weeks, months?

Yes I had a bit of a shock when I had to file something (unrelated to the purchase) and it came back with a 12m time estimate. However, when I was buying the bit of land off our neighbour and it was being expedited because our neighbour was selling her house, I called to chase something up and was told that it had been overlooked so I guess my experience must differ to yours :)

I work in conveyancing so it's not my own experience but it has been the experience on the hundreds of files I have dealt with since lockdown.

LR will expedite if there's a sale or a financial loss due to the delay and start working on the matter within 10 working days but they are the only 2 reasons which they will accept to expedite. It's a disgrace

I work in conveyancing and it really does differ for every lender(and whether they require a survey etc) but I would expect it to be in the region of a few weeks rather than days or months.

You can imagine my horror when I opened a letter to advise that our claim for adverse possession (arghhhh!) was predicted to take 12m! That said, when I called about buying the land off our neighbour I was told that they were working on a 3m turnaround time if it wasn’t expedited!

can you imagine if you or I were so behind on our work? I certainly know that a District Judge would rip me to shreds if I said ‘well, the thing is, I should be able to get it completed within 12m’

I guess if the OP isn’t in any great rush to buy the land then it could work 😬

Exactly! Imagine me telling clients I'm still behind on my work because of covid! They also take at least 30 min to answer the phone and now close their phone lines on Fridays to get caught up on their backlogs. Ar the end of the day it's not a free service, their users do pay fees yet there is zero redress for their appalling lack of customer service/urgency. Everyone involved in conveyancing had massively increased workloads during covid, however we were accountable to clients so had to work extra to keep up, shame the civil servabts at Lar with their very generous pensions and benefits don't have the same work ethic

Transfers of part take much longer at land registry then transfers of whole. Typically they are quoting 12-18 months. You need a land registry compliant plan which will cost 2-400 plus vat. If there are covenants then that needs to be taken into account.

The land registry may send requisitions if they have queries and these can be quite complicated to respond to.

I have just done a transfer of part and was glad to have engaged a solicitor. Who dealt with the LR requisitions and organising the compliant plan.

Discharging the mortgage from the piece of land on your neighbours side can take a while and will cost them too. They can't transfer to you until this is done. Our DX1 took 7 months and was a nightmare and now we wait for the TP1 to go through.