Boundary Issue

[bruncher]

Our neighbours are selling their house. Their buyer has raised a number of 'issues' one of which is that they think the fence (and back wall of our shed) - in the side return between our houses - is two inches over the boundary line. The fence is the responsibility of the neighbour.

The neighbours have invited us to inspect together and remedy this informally to satisfy their buyer. I am reluctant to get into it, as the buyers seem like potential neighbours from hell, the fence and shed have been in position for 20+ years, I'm not looking for stuff to do or new ways to spend money on useless activities. I suspect the buyer will not complete the transaction, they have gone past an earlier exchange date, and keep finding new problems and further reasons to reduce the price.

We like our neighbours and wish they weren't going. We'd like to be helpful, but think maybe they're asking too much of us and that their buyer is asking too much of them. I think we'd need a surveyor and solicitor involved, and who would pay these expenses? And who would pay for a new shed if required?

Is it not the case that boundaries are not an exact science?

Any advice or informed opinions would be appreciated.

[Clitheroekid]

... the fence and shed have been in position for 20+ years ...

That's really all you need. Just tell your neighbours that you can claim possessory title to the land because of the time that you've been in occupation of it, which means that they can't make you alter the boundaries.

What you must not do under any circumstances is say anything that might be construed as an admission that they own the land, as this will destroy your right to claim possessory title.

Your neighbours will presumably relay this to their solicitor who will agree, inform the buyer's solicitor accordingly and that should be an end to it.

Of course this makes the possibly optimistic assumption that you are actually having the sale dealt with by a solicitor and not by a muppet `conveyancing executive' who has never heard of possessory title ...

[redsturgeon]

Excellent and succinct advice from CK as always!

I have a supplementary question though. How would anyone know that something was two inches over any official boundary, surely the deeds showing boundaries are nowhere near that accurate.

John

[didds]

Good question John... I could think that _maybe_ in _some_ circumstances there is a clear and obvious land feature that makes the line obvious.

No I can;t think of anything obvious as an example

didds

[Itsallaguess]

Just tell your neighbours that you can claim possessory title to the land because of the time that you've been in occupation of it, which means that they can't make you alter the boundaries.

Whilst I've just read up a little on this 'possessory title' aspect CK, can I please just confirm that with regards to claims on land boundaries, if something has been in place for 10 years then a claim can be made on it disregarding if any documents that may contradict that claim still exist?

Whilst my brief reading-up has seemed to confirm that this title can be claimed where a physical situation has been established for 10 years in the absence of such documentation, it's not entirely clear to me that this is still the case even if documentation may exist to dispute it.

I'd be very grateful for any clarification on this particular aspect if you've got the answer.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[bruncher]

Many thanks for very useful well-informed advice Clitheroekid. I am mulling over FredBlogg's advice to decline even informal discussions, which I feel is right but my partner (of a brighter more optimistic nature) thinks is unnecessarily unfriendly. Spoke with a surveyor today who thought no harm in an informal chat, so long as nothing is conceded, but people take away different recollections and interpretations of conversations ....

[Halicarnassus]

but people take away different recollections and interpretations of conversations ....

As is always the case, often in such away when reassembled, looks quite different from the original discussion.

[Halicarnassus]

Yes, I'd kind of laugh the whole thing off as a nonsense if your neighbour confronts you about meeting up. The onus is not on you to do anything other than get on with things as normal. It's perfectly normal to avoid any meetings that you might think may lead to a mild form of entrapment, whereby concessions are sought even by being seen to meet up to 'discuss' a 'problem'.

You know the situation better than anyone else, so hopefully your gut feeling will tell you what to do. But I'd err on the side of caution.

[JMN2]

It is you that has been inconvenienced after decades of status quo. The whole buying process of your neighbour's house seems to be a farce. It is not in your interest that these people become your neighbours, there would be problems in the future too, lots of them. So you might as well become very uncooperative from the start. A shame that your current neighbours will become collateral damage.

[pochisoldi]

Our neighbours are selling their house. Their buyer has raised a number of 'issues' one of which is that they think the fence (and back wall of our shed) - in the side return between our houses - is two inches over the boundary line. The fence is the responsibility of the neighbour.

The neighbours have invited us to inspect together and remedy this informally to satisfy their buyer. I am reluctant to get into it, as the buyers seem like potential neighbours from hell, the fence and shed have been in position for 20+ years, I'm not looking for stuff to do or new ways to spend money on useless activities. I suspect the buyer will not complete the transaction, they have gone past an earlier exchange date, and keep finding new problems and further reasons to reduce the price.

We like our neighbours and wish they weren't going. We'd like to be helpful, but think maybe they're asking too much of us and that their buyer is asking too much of them. I think we'd need a surveyor and solicitor involved, and who would pay these expenses? And who would pay for a new shed if required?

Is it not the case that boundaries are not an exact science?

Any advice or informed opinions would be appreciated.

Don't get involved in any discussion.

Discussion implies there is disagreement between you and your neighbour

Disagreement implies dispute between you and your neighbour

Dispute - has to be reported by yourselves when you sell, and whenever the purchaser of next door comes to sell.

Your current neighbour doesn't have a problem, your prospective purchaser's conveyancer has a problem.

If you need to have a chat with your neighbour about this, you will be looking to agree that:
i) Neither of us has had a problem with this
ii) If this sale falls through because of an [expletive deleted] conveyancer, we don't want to have to declare any disagreement.
iii) You, my neighbour doesn't want to have to pay for a (pointless) surveyor who will only tell you that the boundary shown on the Land Registry map is approximate and the actual boundary is within the tolerances of the mapping.

PochiSoldi

FWIW:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... pplement-1

"As a general guide, the width of a line on a 1:1250 Ordnance Survey map roughly represents 0.3 metres on the ground. The width of a line on a 1/2500 Ordnance Survey map roughly represents 0.6 metres on the ground. Ordnance Survey publishes expected confidence levels in the accuracy of their maps in terms of relative and absolute accuracy, which are summarised in Relative accuracy and Absolute accuracy respectively."

"It should be noted that copying, reducing or enlarging a plan is likely to distort its accuracy."

[Clitheroekid]

I would endorse the advice given by others not to enter into any discussions with your neighbour.

In any conversation between two people, either face to face or on the phone, there is always the danger that there will subsequently be two versions of what was said. So in your case it's possible that your neighbour could allege that you admitted the boundary was in the wrong place and had always meant to sort it out.

It's then your word against his, and the only way to resolve what was actually said is in a court, where the judge listens to both of you and decides who's telling the truth.

Although in practice it would probably never get that far it's still potentially a great deal of hassle, worry and expense that can be easily avoided by not having that conversation in the first place.

[brightncheerful]

I think the op has to be very careful here. Currently, the op is friendly with the neighbours. If any discussion of the subject were refused and the sale then falls through, isn't there a danger the neighbours could blame the op for the buyer withdrawing in which case the friendliness could turn sour?

According to the op, the buyer has been messing about but actually that's the neighbour's problem, nothing to do with the op. However, since the op doesn't want the neighbours to sell, isn't there a risk that any objection to investigate what to the neighbours would seem a perfectly reasonable request that the op could be said to be deliberately resisting for an ulterior motive.

Contrary to what has been said, my inclination would be to tell the neighbours that because the fence and shed have been there for such a long time you would claim possessory title to the land but that if the neighbours want to investigate further you would have no objection provided they would agree to pay all your costs in the matter, and for their solicitors to provide an undertaking for those costs.

Since no solicitor in his right mind would provide any such undertaking without first being put in funds by the client, the neighbours are unlikely to persevere, instead they'd tell the buyer that if the buyer wants the matter investigated further then the buyer would have to indemnify all costs. Then if the buyer refuses and withdraws from the sale, the neighbours would likely breathe a sigh of relief and so too the op.

[Halicarnassus]

It is you that has been inconvenienced after decades of status quo. The whole buying process of your neighbour's house seems to be a farce. It is not in your interest that these people become your neighbours, there would be problems in the future too, lots of them. So you might as well become very uncooperative from the start. A shame that your current neighbours will become collateral damage.

Yes, it's tempting to take matters so as to scupper the sale. But in doing so you might well fall out with the neighbours. But better the devil you know.

[JMN2]

It is you that has been inconvenienced after decades of status quo. The whole buying process of your neighbour's house seems to be a farce. It is not in your interest that these people become your neighbours, there would be problems in the future too, lots of them. So you might as well become very uncooperative from the start. A shame that your current neighbours will become collateral damage.

Yes, it's tempting to take matters so as to scupper the sale. But in doing so you might well fall out with the neighbours. But better the devil you know.

No, what I meant was just to be politely schtumm and wait for something official and then go for this procedure suggested earlier to recognise the boundary. I did not suggest any night raids or sabotage.

[Clitheroekid]

On re-reading the thread it sounds as though I've contradicted myself. In the first post I advised telling the neighbours you could claim possessory title, which would imply a verbal communication, but in my second post I said don't discuss it with them.

Apologies for any confusion. On reflection, I think the best solution would be just to send a note to the neighbours in writing. It can be done by a letter, text or email - the medium doesn't matter provided it's written down in some form that can later be retrieved.

The note can be quite informal, perhaps something on the following lines:

Dear Fred

Following your recent enquiry about the boundary fence I thought it would be sensible to obtain some basic legal advice.

I've been told that because the fence has been in place for well over 12 years the law says that I'm entitled to ownership of all the land on my side of the fence, whether it's technically shown as my land on the title deeds or not. It's apparently called `possessory title'.

I was also advised that it's extremely unlikely that any boundary plans that exist would show the position of the boundary to within a couple of inches.

I'm sure your own solicitor will confirm this to be the position, in which case I can't really see much point in taking the matter any further.

Yours etc

Of course you can't stop your neighbour contacting you on receipt of the letter, but it doesn't really matter if you speak to him at that point, as you have already made your position clear in writing, and it's inherently very unlikely that you would change that position in the course of a conversation.

[Halicarnassus]

It is you that has been inconvenienced after decades of status quo. The whole buying process of your neighbour's house seems to be a farce. It is not in your interest that these people become your neighbours, there would be problems in the future too, lots of them. So you might as well become very uncooperative from the start. A shame that your current neighbours will become collateral damage.

Yes, it's tempting to take matters so as to scupper the sale. But in doing so you might well fall out with the neighbours. But better the devil you know.

No, what I meant was just to be politely schtumm and wait for something official and then go for this procedure suggested earlier to recognise the boundary. I did not suggest any night raids or sabotage.

Quite, but I don't mean to condone anything underhand. In these cases, it's easy to give advice but the stakes are high.

[Gengulphus]

Apologies for any confusion. On reflection, I think the best solution would be just to send a note to the neighbours in writing. It can be done by a letter, text or email - the medium doesn't matter provided it's written down in some form that can later be retrieved.

Also, make certain you keep a copy of the note - not on the basis that you expect its existence to be denied, just on the basis that fairly informal notes do tend to get discarded / mislaid, and it would be rather awkward if it needed to be retrieved and it turned out that the neighbour had managed to do so and you didn't have a copy!

Gengulphus

[Halicarnassus]

Apologies for any confusion. On reflection, I think the best solution would be just to send a note to the neighbours in writing. It can be done by a letter, text or email - the medium doesn't matter provided it's written down in some form that can later be retrieved.

Also, make certain you keep a copy of the note - not on the basis that you expect its existence to be denied, just on the basis that fairly informal notes do tend to get discarded / mislaid, and it would be rather awkward if it needed to be retrieved and it turned out that the neighbour had managed to do so and you didn't have a copy!

Gengulphus

I would strongly suggest that no written correspondence is entered into. You can inadvertently blunder unwittingly, conceding something that may not be apparent to you, or worse the neighbours can take the hump, read the letter not in the spirit it was written or take umbrage by the fact that you deemed it not suitable to talk to them.

I have previous experience along these lines and to cut a long story short, having tried the softly softly approach to an issue (that I was vindicated in the end about) that was not working, I took the final pre-legal step on advice from my useless lawyer and wrote a polite letter to my neighbour about the issue and it had the effect of throwing petrol on a fire.

[bruncher]

The situation is further complicated by the fact that it's not just a fence at the boundary. The back wall of our shed displaces the fence along part of the line. This part of the line is what is in question.

The back wall of the shed has been constructed of two plywood sheets nailed on a timber 2" X 1" frame. They have removed two panels of the exterior plywood 'skin' to investigate. So one view would be that they've interfered with the wall of my shed, and yet it's their fence.

Perhaps not relevant, but it adds to the awkwardness that their house is a floor deeper than ours (they have a basement and we do not), so they are supposed to maintain a fence from their side that for the length of the house c. 100 feet that can only accessed by ladders or platforms. The rear and front gardens are at the same level, but they have a basement and raised ground floor, whereas our house has a ground floor at ground level. So the fence stays at ground level throughout, but has a wall below it on their side where the ground levels are different.

I should also say that although the shed has been in position for more than 20 years, I have only been in the house for 18 months.

[redsturgeon]

The situation is further complicated by the fact that it's not just a fence at the boundary. The back wall of our shed displaces the fence along part of the line. This part of the line is what is in question.

The back wall of the shed has been constructed of two plywood sheets nailed on a timber 2" X 1" frame. They have removed two panels of the exterior plywood 'skin' to investigate. So one view would be that they've interfered with the wall of my shed, and yet it's their fence.

Perhaps not relevant, but it adds to the awkwardness that their house is a floor deeper than ours (they have a basement and we do not), so they are supposed to maintain a fence from their side that for the length of the house c. 100 feet that can only accessed by ladders or platforms. The rear and front gardens are at the same level, but they have a basement and raised ground floor, whereas our house has a ground floor at ground level. So the fence stays at ground level throughout, but has a wall below it on their side where the ground levels are different.

I should also say that although the shed has been in position for more than 20 years, I have only been in the house for 18 months.

So in fact it would appear that the argument concerns 2 inch of encroachment at about 10 feet above ground level?

Potential neighbours from hell try to avoid at all costs!

John