Housing chain about to implode 😭😭

[HouseMoveRound2]

In-laws are late 70s/early 80s and 17 weeks into conveyancing. 4 weeks ago the buyers solicitor flagged an issue with the title plans - specifically that it looks like part of in-laws house is on neighbours land. This is an administrative issue, in-laws house predates the land registry and the boundary has always been alongside the perimeter of their detached house. The red boundary line is wrong.

Issue seems to have arose aprox 4 months ago when MIL decided register the property herself with the Land Registry(previously unregistered). Unfortunately she seems to have made a mistake, and now the boundary line on the plans runs through their detached house runs through the house rather than alongside it 😭😭😭 I would have thought this could just be fixed easily, but apparently we now need to get neighbours to legally sign that patch of land back to us.

the main problem is the neighbouring property is a commercial one, and they are in between exchanging and completing so have said they can’t instruct solicitors to amend boundaries. They are a huge corporate company and couldn’t really give a shit, they are completing “in the new year” and have basically told us to take it up with the new owners.

solicitors are advising we go down adverse possession, which seems crazy as in laws havent been using neighbours land, but I’m not legally trained so they clearly know more than me. I’m just despairing that this is on the cusp of imploding because MIL made an admin error when registering a property.

any similar stories that have ended well?!?!

Is it too late to just buy an indemnity policy?

Adverse possession will probably take longer than the new year realistically.

You can also potentially apply for a rectification that the boundary was incorrectly mapped if you have evidence.

The organisation I work for owns lots of land. Periodically a neighbour will apply to LR to register a piece of land that is registered to us, usually as a first registration of their property. The LR send us a letter, as the registered owner, and if it's something like what you've described above where it's clearly an error we just respond that we have no objection and corrected titles are sent to us by the LR. There no solicitors or anything involved.

Have you seen the neighbours title, is the missing bit definitely registered to the neighbour and not just unregistered? MIL making a mistake wouldn't have affected the neighbours boundary, just her own, the neighbours parcel would have needed title docs sent to LR to register that at some point.

Was ILs and the neighbours land all one parcel at any point?

@BeOchreDog rectification is what I’m hoping for, but we are 4 weeks into trying to sort this and I’m sure the solicitor would have considered this. Going to double check though!

@GrannyAchingsShepherdsHut what you have described is what I thought would happen, I’m going to double check with solicitor tomorrow to understand why we aren’t going down this route. We have seen neighbours title, solicitor says it doesn’t give enough evidence - on their title the shape of my in-laws house is different, on in laws title the house shape looks like an extension has been put over the boundary, it hasn’t, they haven’t built an extension and and the building predates the land registry!

OK, is that the LR plan? What does the plan on your ILs original title docs look like from when they bought?

Yes, both title plans are what solicitor got from LR.

Inlaws original title docs (from 40 years ago) show plot has been drawn around with a really thick black marker that blots out most the plot, totally useless unfortunately

If the original documents don't show that that bit of land is your ILs, or don't show it clearly enough to prove one way or the other, that's probably why the solicitor is talking about adverse possession.

Just checking, the outside edge of the black marker line, is that accurate to the boundary?

Thanks @GrannyAchingsShepherdsHut i appreciate you taking the time to talk it through with me.

yes, the outside of the black line is accurate, to the plot, but it’s been done with really thick felt tip that covers the whole of the building shape, and has really unclean lines that overshoot the boundary in places. It’s a mess basically and I can see why it can’t be used as evidence.

was sort of hoping I could just undo my MILs LR registration, a bit like pressing ‘undo’ on a computer 🤣🤣 and then resubmit with a proper title plan prepared by a solicitor!