No man’s Land !

[Downward]

Morning.
So we bought this house 23 years ago.
All the old historical maps on the OS show the property and land within the red boundary.

However the search has bought up this square bit of land which belongs to no-one. Before we moved in the fences were up on the neighbours side all along the red line as that’s their responsibility.

Anyone any ideas ? It’s to do with the sale of our property.

[ozzuk]

This is what you pay your solicitor for! Having been in this situation several times...I'd just get indemnity policy on that piece of land, say it's always been part of the property and leave it like that. If you try and get it registered to you (I think something like promisary title or possesive title) it could take months to sort (LR have to visit site)- let the new owners take that on.

[Downward]

ozzuk said:

This is what you pay your solicitor for! Having been in this situation several times...I'd just get indemnity policy on that piece of land, say it's always been part of the property and leave it like that. If you try and get it registered to you (I think something like promisary title or possesive title) it could take months to sort (LR have to visit site)- let the new owners take that on.

Yeah that’s fine it just came up as a query on the sale. But yeah 23 years on no one can access it and when we purchased in 2002 it didn’t come up then. It’s just a bit strange especially as I said the neighbours fence line was already in place !
And it’s. it like we haven’t had 3 different mortgage companies in these years !

[surveyor]

It belongs to someone... Just not registered...

[Downward]

surveyor said:

It belongs to someone... Just not registered...

Any idea why ?
I would have thought it would have been picked up with the numerous times this house has been bought and sold.

And given we have 22 years here is there no entitlement to the land as we are technically using it

[surveyor]

Not a clue. I would suspect there was a physical feature that at some point which is (probably) long gone and people have taken a view when purchasing it in the past.

[JerryEXE]

I have a similar(ish) situation with our plot where there’s a small section in the corner which would logically be ours but isn’t. This is down to our place being the show home on the development and the developers kept hold of this corner section to keep the advertising hoardings, signs to the car park etc in place after the show home was sold and occupied. The signs were still there when the first owners sold up, our conveyancer picked up on the discrepancy, we were happy with the explanation and went ahead. Now that the signs have gone the land has just been absorbed into the associated green area so it would seem quite odd looking at the title if you didn’t know the background.

[DKL]

Indemnity policy is the answer, in case anyone pops up and claims it further down the line, which is highly unlikely. We had exactly this on one sale.
If you go to LR with evidence of use for the last however many years they will issue possessory title and it may not take too long.

We had this in spades with our last purchase, vendor really hadn't done their homework, but if it is holding up a sale LR can move quickly, ours took about a month to issue.

[Pedro25]

My situation almost exactly the same, small 3ft sq plot of land in the same position to the OP's plan. My house one of four new builds by a private developer, in fact the builder was living in the house I eventually bought, he moved into number 3. Two years after we'd moved in got a knock on the door, standing there was a guy the size of a small mountain standing on the drive, gave me a solicitors letter from a firm based in Leeds asking the occupier to call them, did so the next day, solicitor told me about this plot of land and did I want to purchase it as currently it had no owner registered. Asked him the price he said he'd confirm in writing, three days later got the price £8500! Wrote back and told him no obviously, checked with my purchasing solicitor he checked LR details and then said it's on the registry having no name against it. This plot of land cannot be accessed by anyone surrounding it 3 back gardens meet in that spot one of which is mine.

[Lotobear]

This is incredibly common - given the location of the unregistered land is not critical (for example it does not straddle your access) and probably has little tangible value I wouldn't even offer an indemnity policy.

I would simply provide a Stat Dec confirming you've occupied it unchallenged for more that 12 years and they can do the application for possessory title at their leisure.

[andyxxx]

May it be worth looking at the 7 year boundary rule and/or adverse possession?

[Downward]

I’ve got the original searches docs from 2002 and it shows the boundary as the red outline not with the strange cut out.

Bit bizzare.

Document they have sent me is dated 1973 !

Edited by Downward on Thursday 13th March 18:47

[Chrisgr31]

We have a narrow bit of garden at the far end. A neighbour said that when they bought their house their solicitor said there was a small bit of unregistered land at this point where 4 gardens meet.

Equus on here did a search and it appears that the Land Registry has adjusted boundaries to get rid of this small slice of unregistered land. It just depends on the date that you get the registered title plan from. I guess they'll do something similar with that bit in due course.

[Steve H]

Downward said:

I’ve got the original searches docs from 2002 and it shows the boundary as the red outline not with the strange cut out.

Bit bizzare.

Document they have sent me is dated 1973 !

Edited by Downward on Thursday 13th March 18:47

If you have later docs showing it as part of your land surely that means it is now part of your land?

A glitch from 1973 that got sorted out at some point in the following 29 years isn’t really something that you can be expected to explain.

[Downward]

Steve H said:

Downward said:

I’ve got the original searches docs from 2002 and it shows the boundary as the red outline not with the strange cut out.

Bit bizzare.

Document they have sent me is dated 1973 !

Edited by Downward on Thursday 13th March 18:47

If you have later docs showing it as part of your land surely that means it is now part of your land?

A glitch from 1973 that got sorted out at some point in the following 29 years isn’t really something that you can be expected to explain.

Yeah I have the docs when we bought the house in 2002 from the searches and the square bit isn’t there.

[Downward]

So my buyers Solictors are being a bit funny about this so not sure what’s going on.
My solicitor isn’t helping much so we are in limbo at the moment.

There’s an entry on the Property in 1982 which someone drew up to mirror the picture above.

As far as the Land registry are concerned it’s correct.
Solicitor is too busy sorting out current completions for the end of the month and my buyers and we have no idea what’s going on or what to do.
Their solicitor has said they won’t accept indemnity policy as they won’t likely be staying in the house long term before selling on (1st time buyers)

Edited by Downward on Sunday 30th March 21:22

[Downward]

There’s an entry on the Property in 1982 which someone drew up to mirror the picture above.

As far as the Land registry are concerned it’s correct.
Solicitor is too busy sorting out current completions for the end of the month and my buyers and we have no idea what’s going on or what to do.
Their solicitor has said they won’t accept indemnity policy as they won’t likely be staying in the house long term before selling on (1st time buyers)

[LooneyTunes]

Downward said:

There’s an entry on the Property in 1982 which someone drew up to mirror the picture above.

As far as the Land registry are concerned it’s correct.
Solicitor is too busy sorting out current completions for the end of the month and my buyers and we have no idea what’s going on or what to do.
Their solicitor has said they won’t accept indemnity policy as they won’t likely be staying in the house long term before selling on (1st time buyers)

If the buyers are going to insist on you getting adverse possession/registered title sorted for that then, unfortunately, your sale is off.

I’ve been going through similar with a small piece of land that has clearly been part of a larger plot: it took nearly three years for the AP registration request to get to the top of the Land Registry’s “to do” list and still isn’t fully sorted.

Your buyers need to be pragmatic and decide whether there is any risk that someone will ever appear from the woodwork with a stronger claim to that land than you/your property has. I’d suggest that if the area concerned is unregistered and has been part of your garden for 20+ years then that’s unlikely but you can’t completely rule out that they might.