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Buying house on unadopted road HELP

56 replies

FancyBacon · 23/05/2025 08:53

We had an offer accepted on a house last week and have just found out it’s on an unadopted road.

The road is currently in pretty bad condition with huge potholes and overgrown trees.
It is about 60m long and consists of about 10 terrace houses on one side and 4 detached houses the other side. Nearly every property on the road is rented out or turned into flats/hmo’s. There doesn’t seem to be any agreement in place between homeowners.

What do I need to be aware of? Will this be sellable in the future? Will a mortgage lender have issues with this? Please help!

OP posts:
TattiePants · 24/05/2025 10:30

I’ve lived on an unadopted private road for 18 years and I’d walk away from this one. Our road is bigger than yours with 30 houses but there is a well run management committee, everyone pays their annual fees (with contingency plans for the odd occasion someone hasn’t paid), a bank account with several £000s at any one time, regular AGMs and £2m PLI in place. This means we can always pay our regular expenses such as insurance, gardener, drain cleaning and tree maintenance (lots of TPOs) and there’s a process in place for when we need larger contributions eg when the road was resurfaced.

For some reason, there are quite a few unadopted roads in my part of the city and you can definitely tell the ones that don’t have any management and unfortunately, these are mainly the streets with HMOs and renters.

Crouton19 · 24/05/2025 11:06

Your solicitor will look into all this, if you get that far. No-one would expect you to know the legal position before you put an offer in.

Just because a road is unadopted, doesn't mean it isn't owned by someone. You can find out who owns it at the Land Registry. Their title register for the road will likely say it is subject to other plots of land having a right of way in exchange for contributing towards the upkeep. No contribution, no right of way (although that can be hard to enforce).

If the road is unregistered, ie ownership not known, there is a presumption that everyone along the road owns the bit of road in front of their plot up to the middle line. You can maintain your own bit if you like, but other owners will likely have a right of way due to having used it for a couple of decades or more.

The landlords on the street might not mind contributing to upkeep (possibly no-one has asked/volunteered to coordinate it) as they would be able to make it a business expense, I believe.

The council might adopt the road, this can be applied for, but they would want the road firstly put into an 'adoptable standard' by the road owner.

As above, if the road is unregistered, each plot owner along it is presumed to own a bit of it and could apply to the Land Registry to register it. It might also be possible to form a management company to collectively own the road, if it isn't ever going to be adopted.

A solicitor is best placed to advise on this particular situation, but this alone wouldn't put me off personally if everything else about the house was positive.

Sgreenpy · 24/05/2025 13:05

It depends on the position you're in, do you love the house, have you been searching long?

You could lower your offer given the private road info or are you getting a 'bargain' anyway?

Sharing a road is not a problem- I live in a terrace on a private road and everyone just maintains their patch. We dont have a management company or anything. I think technically everyone owns the bit outside their own house and we all have right of way to use it. So I think getting to know who actually owns the road is a good start.

Good luck

Words · 24/05/2025 13:42

The HMOs and renters would bother me as the landlords won't care re state of road.

I lived for years on a steep cobbled unadopted road, Nice area but only six houses.

The cobbles deteriorated over time and sunk in places as delivery vans became more frequent.

There were never a y légal issues or problems with buying or selling.

The worst was no sweeping or gritting. It was a hellish slippy nightmare in hard winters.

But as I say, the HMOs would really give me pause.

Mrsbloggz · 24/05/2025 14:14

Sounds like bad news to me I'm afraid ☹️

Welshmonster · 24/05/2025 14:32

Withdraw your offer before you get too far down the road

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