Rights to adjoining land

[KennyBones]

Hi,

When I bought my house 8 years ago it had a very large back and side garden enclosed by a boundary wall. After we bought the house we found out that the garden to the side of the house had originally been intended as a site for another house but the builder had abandoned it for some reason.

One of the previous owners of the house built a wall around the site and took it as part of his garden. The building contracting company has since gone bust and the rights to the land are now murky at best.

My solicitor has been working for the last six years to get this land signed over to us through the land registry but it has been a slow process.

I have spent almost €2000 on fees through this process and the end is still no nearer in my eyes.

I am hoping to sell this house in the next couple of years and I'd like to get this sorted so that the sale of the adjoining site (I have OPP for a 3 bed house on the site) might offset the negative equity on my own house.

Should this have been spotted when I was buying the house? Do I have any options to speed the process along?

Thanks

 

[j26]

It certainly should have been spotted when you purchased the property. From your description, it sounds like you have your site and another full house site. That is not a minor boundary issue that might have been overlooked.

The basic problem is that you are squatting (adverse possession) on the adjacent site, and can't get title until you are squatting for the relevant statutory period - usually 12 years.

If the building company has been dissolved, it may well be that the property has vested in the Minister for Finance under Section 28 of the State Property Act, 1954. The negative of this scenario for you is that the statutory limitation for State land is 30 years, and not the usual 12, so your adverse possession application is more complicated. If this is the case (and it's a big if), then writing to the Minister for Finance for a disclaimer, or offering to buy it for a couple of hundred quid may well be a way to move forward.

It really will depend very much on the facts of the situation, so you will need to discuss it with your solicitor.

 

[dazza21ie]

Something like this should have been discovered when you were buying the property. A boundary survey would have exposed it.

It sounds like your solicitor may be doing a Section 49 application for you. You may not have the required 12 years yourself but you can rely on the time the previous owner occuppied the land also. These types of applications are notoriously slow (although they have become quicker in recently) and are costly. Like all government departments if you get the right person and ask nicely for it to be moved on a little quicker, explaining your predicament, the Land Registry will usually assist.