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I moved house at the end of last year. We were advised that we owned a wall between our plot an a neighbours plot. After speaking with my neighbour, he thinks it's his. This is a totally amicable thing I should add, but we'd like to clear it up. The points to note are:-
He has a "charge certificate" from '94 just before our houses were built. This includes a copy of an official land registry plan which clearly shows a T mark on his side of the wall. This plan has features that clearly do not reflect how the houses were built (e.g. fences, driveways and roads in the wrong place)
I have a copy of the offical land registry plan from '97 which clearly shows a T mark on my side of the wall. This was provided as part of my purchase so should be the latest.
Neither of our deeds details the ownership. How do we proceed? If we decide between ourselves, is there a cheap way we can get this recorded?
Thanks,
A
Does it really matter? if anything, owning the wall just becomes a liability if it's damaged or needs rebuilding. Seems to be a waste of money even if it only cost £30 or something to register it.
jon1973, you're assuming each party wants to claim the wall.
Maybe they are both trying to shift the responsibility on to the other. 🙂
Basically I think it comes down to where the wall sits, according to the land registry. If it's entirely on your side of the boundary, it's yours, and vice versa. If it's astride the boundary, it's a bit more complicated, but my understanding is that it's jointly owned.
PS. I'm not a solicitor, nor even anything associated with the legal proffession, but I have been researching it a bit as I have a neighbour who's a complete @rsey funtbucket! 🙂
jon1973, you're assuming each party wants to claim the wall.
Maybe they are both trying to shift the responsibility on to the other.
Maybe, but both parties seem to have evidence that they own the wall (the 'T' mark on the respective owners side of the wall). If I was trying to relinquish myself of responsibility I think I'd keep that evidence to myself, and let the other person believe it was theirs.
I know a while back the next door neighbour had moved out
and I decided to change the fence.
Has I was about to start taking down the broken fence my opposite
neighbour told me that was not my fence.
I then contacted my mortgage provider and they sent me a letter
providing the same information.
For us it turns out that when i face the back of the property
the right side fence is my responsibility
Hope that helps.
For us it turns out that when i face the back of the property
the right side fence is my responsibility
I think grantway's got something here. Many years ago, when I was young(er), my dad had a dispute about a fence with our neighbours. They had massive weeds and creepers growing, that pushed the fence over. We asked them to uproot the weeds so we could sort the fence out, then they got all arsey and said it was their fence, but the deeds said it was clearly ours. They refused to sort it, the bastards, leaving us with a fence collapsing into our garden
Some weedkiller when they were out, sorted the problem...
The wall on the other side (left) fell down, and we had another small dispute with those neighbours, but that was sorted when they checked their deeds, and built a new one.
never accept responsibility for a wall.
We have a wall at the top of our property, it goes to a highter level than our drive, the neighbours house stands above this wall, and has been backfilled about 10 foot,or almost to the top of the wall.So his house stnds higher than our drive.
The neighbour now faces a bill of possibly 30,000 quid to remove the wall, underpinning his house and rebuilding as wall as reinstating his and our drives.
Militant graham has kind of got it. I don't really want ownership of the wall, but I do want the issue cleared up so that if either of us come to sell, it's clear who owns it and is responsible for the upkeep. What I didn't point out was that the general pattern of ownership for other fences/walls on the plan is on the south and west of the property. This wall is on the south and west of my property so my owning it would be consistent with this.
Who would give a crap if they were buying a house?
That's the sort of thing the solicitor brings up, and you just nod through.
Who would give a crap if they were buying a house?That's the sort of thing the solicitor brings up, and you just nod through
Exactly, hardly a deal breaker.