I’ll give you the background….
When my Dad died I got a mortgage and bought my sister out of her half of the house. My parents had owned the property, buying off plan back in 1966. The property is Leasehold except for a strip of land at the front which is freehold. The builder hadn’t bought all the land when he started so my Dad had to buy the extra bit.
Now when all my paperwork went in the Land registry phoned me up and explained that back in the 60’s people didn’t register the land and my neighbour at the back had registered a strip of my back garden the day before mine went in. While they were at it, they brought my boundary back to the fence. It used to go out to Half the road. Not arsed about that, unless I could mount a Toll both 🙂
They asked if I wanted to dispute it, which I didn’t at the time as I was trying to get the Mortgage over the line. I don’t use the back garden much but was a bit put out that a neighbour of 50 years pulled a fast one. He’s trying to sell his house and found out about the unregistered land and took advantage.
Last week he knocked on my door and asked me “how much to buy the strip of land?” so he can build a driveway/off road parking. His house isn’t selling as you can’t park on the drive way because my garden juts out. No idea why it was built like this. What he’s really asking, as he owns the land, is “how much to not start a dispute?”
I’m happy to “sell” it to him, how do I value it?
It’s roughly 5mx1m. The Yellow bit in the picture, the blue squiggle is his driveway.

£10k…it’s a kind of ransom strip and he needs to pay the ransom

you have it he wants it, depends how badly he wants it really. Ask how much he’s willing to offer as this seems key to him getting the sale of his house.

Minimum 5k. That’s how much I had to pay to bribe my previous owner to sign the eb-bloc garage to my old house over to me when I came to sell.

Also, about the same price as a decent new bike. Just saying.

Depends where you are and the difference in value to him in adding a driveway.

^ Yeah, a decent bike. Treat yourself.

Also, about the same price as a decent new bike. Just saying.

£12.5k if the latest mag is anything to go by!

Surely its the value of the bit of land, plus half of the bit he grabbed, plus cheeky **** tax?

Value of the land plus the current value of the strip he grabbed when your dad died. Dish served cold.

EDIT: Sorry, is he now asking to buy the land he grabbed?

“Several grand and the strip of land you helped yourself to.”

So this person pulled a fast one on you previously, and now wants goodwill to take his sale over the line? I’d be going in very hard.

10% of his house sale price! 🙂

What cougar said. A few k and he signs back the land he decided to grab. He pays the fees too.
Out of interest what is he trying to sell the house at? If lots then put the amount up to 5k. But make sure you get the land back for your garden and boundary. He is a cheeky f***, plus the new owners could be crap about it

Or hold out for 5 years until it’s cost you both 100k in legal fees and you are headline news in the Daily Mail – with a photo of you at the end of your drive, arms crossed and with a sulky face on! 🙂

Real answer is – how far are you going back to when he ‘acquired the land’ at the land registry. If a few months then dispute it with Land Registry, get your land back and tell him to foook off.

If we’re going back years I don’t see what you can do as the land is his at the Land Registry.

Any dispute would pretty much kill his chances of selling it for the immediate future, so he is well and truly over a barrel. Name your price and make sure you make him sweat hard in the interim.

As above the very last thing he will want is a neighbour dispute if he is trying to sell!

Doe he realise you know he grabbed the land? I guess you didn’t want a dispute at the time as you were trying to get a mortgage. Let him know that you remember this and the reason you did not dispute it at the time.

Then get him to make you an offer?

He wants it, you don’t particularly have a need to sell it so its up to him to name his best price. Nobody else is going to want to buy it.

Then get him to make you an offer?

I think the neighbour will likely only think that he was regularising an existing situation from the ’60s as ‘his’ drive was always on the OPs land, but the fence was in-board. I will expect he will offer very little. OP should get in there first and ask for what he is thinks the value is or £12.5k for a mega-sled bike 🙂 – whichever is higher.

In the grand scheme of buying and selling most houses, 5-10k isn’t really a fat lot. So I would definitely be looking well north of that. The idea above of 10% of the value of his house may be flippant, but it’s not a bad idea to somehow make it a proportion of the value of his house

To a degree the price depends on the value of the property. Personally however I would start with a high number, probably in the region of £30 – £50,000. See how much the neighbour is really willing to pay. No point taking £3,000 if they have already put aside £10,000+ contingency.
Also, definitely challenge the land grab. The land registry making a mistake (by taking the word of your neighbour presumably with no corroborating evidence) doesn’t mean that the neighbour now owns your land. I have been through a similar thing (but with a local council trying to claim a small front garden). There is likely to be an original plan somewhere (even if unregistered) showing the ownerships. Ultimately someone will visit the property and presumably see quite clearly what the ‘historic’ ownership has actually been.

Where is the land he registered recently? His drive you squiggled in blue? If he has gained a whole parking space that’s a fair whack added to the value of his property…

I leased 2sqm of a paddock to the British Pipeline Assocation for £2500 plus all costs so £5k for 5sqm sounds about right.
You could probably push it some more seeing as it will give them a driveway.

I’d let him make the offer, he needs to buy it more than you need to sell it.

I’d be telling him as a minimum to agree to transfer back the land he “acquired” – sounds like he did so via fraud and the LR are VERY interested in fraudulent transfers of land. It’s likely that if you can demonstrate that the land was your father’s for the last XX no of years and shortly before registration he put in an application, the LR would overturn his application on title anyway.

So I’d be saying this to him: agree to a transfer of the land at the rear back into your title, and he pays all the legal fees, plus whatever amount you think is worth it for your bit of land at thr front (£10k sounds like a nice, round number to me) and he pays all application and legal fees for that as well.

If he doesn’t go for it, tell him you’ll notify the LR of a fraudulent transfer and see where that gets him…

What shocks me is that your house is built partly on leasehold land and partly on freehold land!!

Might be being dim but he has to drive over the yellow bit to get onto his own driveway? Or does the driveway not actually exist yet?

And where is the fence? On the line between the yellow bit and the red boarder? In normal day to day life since 1966 has the yellow bit ever felt like part of your garden? Do you now (or your dad back in the day) maintain that yellow bit?

A photo might help.

Do you know for sure if you dad actually owned it to start with if it wasn’t registered and didn’t just do a little land grab when everyone moved in. I guess 50 years ago with fewer households having a car the implication of that wee bit being owned by your dad might not have been appreciated for future drive designs. And is there not some benefit to you in terms of aesthetics him parking off road instead of parked up your street?

I think my view on it depends on if this is effectively correcting an error in the 60s (in which case rule 1 would seem to imply it’s worth a slab of beer and a warm glow for doing the right thing) or if you are doing him a significant favour at an appreciable cost or inconvenience to you in which case its worth proper money.

But people who automatically think in terms of ransom strips to shaft a neighbour because they can tend to be chicken chokers in my experience.

edit – and this too…

What shocks me is that your house is built partly on leasehold land and partly on freehold land!!

Surely the correct response to someone who has acted like an arse in the past is to act like an arse in response.

Tell him you knew what he was doing at the time and even though you were given the option to contest it you decided not to so it didnt raise a dispute and effect your mortgage. Tell him its now time to raise a dispute in order to effect his sale.

Then let it sit for a while. He will either bury his head in the sand in which case you can kick him squarely in the bollocks by raising the issue legally or he comes back to you with an offer. Whatever happens you are in control.

Just to clear a few questions up.
It’s the Yellow bit he grabbed, which is 2 foot higher than the pavement and fenced in. It’s always been like that. The notch into his driveway is a brick retaining wall, again about 2 foot high.
So to actually use the drive way, he has to remove the wall and drop the land 2 foot. The driveway is at a 35 degree angle, you can’t actually get a car up it. So his plan is to flatten it and make a car port.

He grabbed it about 2 years ago now. I called him on it when he did it. Claimed his solicitor must have done it when getting his house valued ready for sale. But as I didn’t want to dispute, because I was about to complete, I just decided sod it.

The freehold bit at the front gives me half the head of the close and half the road in front of my house.

Some parking spots around here were being sold for £18k each a few years ago. I’d hang out for a fair whack, what is there to lose? Are there properties sold in the area with/without parking that might give you a guideline? Don’t be distracted by the size of the strip, it’s a much bigger deal than that.

My thinking is, he asking you to name a price. Figure in to that the cheeky **** pinched it in the first place, how desperate is he to settle this quickly, how far are you prepared to go to dispute this? How much value would this acquisition add to his houses selling price? I assume that there is no love lost here, followi g his cheeky land grab. If he legitimately thought he owned that land, why would he offer you a price anyway? Theres probably more to it than that, but Id be thinking along those lines.
Offer to buy it off him, seeing as he ‘owns’ it, then double the price he offers you, for his brass neck. I wouldnt normally advocate tit for tat, but **** ‘im, he created this mess, he can cough up to sort it.
And its not about the size of the strip of land, its about how much value it adds to a house which is unsellable as is, but eminently more sellable with your little strip flattened and tarmaced.

How long do you have to file a dispute with the land registry?

If the land is clearly fenced off and at a different level to his, and has been throughout the history of your father’s ownership, I’m not sure how he can defend it if you dispute.

Do you have a friendly estate agent that can offer thoughts on the value of his property with and without off-street parking, and you could use that to guide your price?

The opportunistic way he took it as soon as your dad died should come back to bite him, really.

eh? this still doesn’t make sense. Is this right:

So the yellow bit is fenced in – to your garden? Thus making the precedent that is yours really.

His solicitor noticed the yellow bit was unregistered so he grabbed it (no way he didn’t know what he was doing, probably hoped you would sell the house immediately and he could move the fence on your completion day as of course your deeds wont show it).

Now he wants to sell his house first, and knowing what he did has rather embarrassingly has gone begging to you to make it right.

I’d still ask him to make an offer first, and for him to bear in mind that this has been bugging you for years and you want to avoid a falling out.

I assume you don’t particularly want the land anyway.

I’d let him make the offer, he needs to buy it more than you need to sell it.

Is what I’d do. His offer will determine how serious he is about it, if its a cheeky low ball you can just laugh it off and say no thanks.  Where as if you say £5k and he’s factored in £10k he’ll probably snap your arm off. You have something he wants, let him work for it not the other way about.

Totally confused. You said he grabbed some land, and that he also now wants to buy some land….

All good so far.

… but then you say that the bit he wants to buy is the bit he already grabbed?

Which bit have I misunderstood?

Claimed his solicitor must have done it when getting his house valued ready for sale.

Who gets their solicitor involved when valuing their own house for sale?

He’s been eyeing that strip of land for a while, knew your dad wouldn’t stand for it being annexed, so tried to do it stealthily when he died. And failed, mainly because he thought you’d sell up and disappear, and you didn’t.

but then you say that the bit he wants to buy is the bit he already grabbed?

He’s grabbed it, but realises he has no chance of holding on to it if OP disputes with the LR. So is desperately trying to avoid a dispute that would scupper his house sale by offering OP money.

What can be said it that 50 years ago some absolute knobber of a developer royally **** up the land division and registering. So you don’t own some of the land your house is built on but you do own part of the road.

You also own half the road and the head of the close? Is that not a shit ton of trouble coming your way. Nice of the council to maintain the tarmac for you. Any potential for getting charged for maintaining water pipes etc which turn out to be on your land.

How long until the leasehold underneath you comes up for renewal?

Messy.

Also confused.

Can a parcel of land be registered to someone without being actually owned by them? A bit like a V5 doesn’t actually need to name the legal owner of the vehicle.

I think martinhutch has pretty much hit the nail on the head there, as I see it.
Seeing as he is selling ,you wont be neighbours long, so go very hard indeed.

Offer to buy it off him, seeing as he ‘owns’ it, then double the price

Genius.

… and if you do sell make sure it’s liberally planted with frozen sausages the day you hand it over.

Martinhutch has this right. It’s all about the value of his parking space isn’t it. If it adds 20k then I’d say you want to see 50% of that. And give it to your Dad’s favourite cause if it feels a bit grubby.

Getout there now and start planting daffodil bulbs, be sure to give him a cheery wave and a wink as you’re doing it

I’d let him make the offer, he needs to buy it more than you need to sell it.

+1

Also, how well did your folks get on with him?

As in, if they didn’t ‘cos he was an arse – play hard.

But if he helped your folks thru cancer say, then that’s different and I’d be ‘reasonable’.