Advice on overhanging property

[dirtychinchilla]

Afternoon,

Hypothetically speaking, if you were buying a brand new house and the neighbour's garage's roof, soffits, and guttering breached the property line, as well as the drain pipe for the guttering being within your driveway, what action would you take? It would seem to me that if it crosses your property boundary, it would belong to you.

dirtychinchilla

Edit, solution below in case it's of use to anyone:

As I didn't want to leave you guys hanging (see what I did there), the answer is in the Party Wall Act Section 2(2), which gives the owner the right to:

(h)to cut away or demolish parts of any wall or building of an adjoining owner overhanging the land of the building owner or overhanging a party wall, to the extent that it is necessary to cut away or demolish the parts to enable a vertical wall to be erected or raised against the wall or building of the adjoining owner;

In that case, you would simply have to serve notice on the neighbour. As it's your right to do this, they can't actually object. The only proviso is that you then have to make good the part of their property that you cut, which is to be expected.

Satisfactory solution, if not very irritating.

 

[Derek W]

If it was a band new property, it wouldn't happen as it wouldn't pass building regulations.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

If it was a band new property, it wouldn't happen as it wouldn't pass building regulations.

Interesting. What if an agreement was put in place?

 

[Steampunk]

Afternoon,

Hypothetically speaking, if you were buying a brand new house and the neighbour's garage's roof, soffits, and guttering breached the property line, as well as the drain pipe for the guttering being within your driveway, what action would you take? It would seem to me that if it crosses your property boundary, it would belong to you.

dirtychinchilla

1. Live with it.
2. Make some requests of your neighbour, that they won't agree to, mess up the relationship with your neighbours.
3. Spend a lot of money on solicitors which you may never see back after years of litigation and stress. Wreck the relationship with your neighbours.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

1. Live with it.
2. Make some requests of your neighbour, that they won't agree to, mess up the relationship with your neighbours.
3. Spend a lot of money on solicitors which you may never see back after years of litigation and stress. Wreck the relationship with your neighbours.

And if it’s a new build?

 

[Drumroll]

Not so black and white in reality, but a headache to enforce.
Unless is a shoddy job, that may cause issues, that wouldn't bother me, personally.
Same approach regarding trees from neighbour's garden where some branches may cross the boundary of your property. You may collect fruits from those branches or even get them trimmed, but I would make sure the competent area of the Council responsible for that gives the go ahead.
Best advice is try, friendly, consult the neighbour first.
But my general advice is, if something is already there, and bothers you, don't bother buying it, knowing that an "issue" (at least for you) is already present.

 

[Drumroll]

1. Live with it.
2. Make some requests of your neighbour, that they won't agree to, mess up the relationship with your neighbours.
3. Spend a lot of money on solicitors which you may never see back after years of litigation and stress. Wreck the relationship with your neighbours.

Exactly this.
If was the case of a neighbour parking an old trailer full of rubbish at one of your parking spaces or at the visitor's one, fair enough. But if you haven't bought the property yet, walk away.
Unless your Jeff Bezos, always will be compromises when buying something.
And if those compromises are something that you won't compromise, don't bother.
I would be more concerned if such guttering or any other (mentioned) thing may affect the structure of your house.

 

[Maccapacca]

Property lines aren’t very well defined, just remember it’s usually a block plan with a red felt pen drawn over it. The scale means the felt pen at 1:1 could be a 300mm wide, also you’re relying on all your joining properties having the same red line drawn at the same time with the same pen at the same scale with no overlapping.

Add all of that to you will have to survey that what’s actually been built is exactly as the red line drawings.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

Ok maybe a better question would be what is the legal standing assuming both houses are still for sale? It crosses a property boundary presumably making it the property of the house whose boundary it crosses over to at that point?

if there’s a drainage issue, who would be responsible?

take the emotional issue of a neighbour out of it

 

[Steampunk]

And if it’s a new build?

Same thing. Doesn't matter if it's a new build done incorrectly, or an older property that's been added to later. Both are wrong, but enforcing it is going to be a big problem. You'd have to ask someone to spend thousands tearing the garage down and re-building it. They won't do that unless you go to court and make them, which is going to cost you a lot of money that you may not get back. It will sour the relationship with the people you have to live next to.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

Same thing. Doesn't matter if it's a new build done incorrectly, or an older property that's been added to later. Both are wrong, but enforcing it is going to be a big problem. You'd have to ask someone to spend thousands tearing the garage down and re-building it. They won't do that unless you go to court and make them, which is going to cost you a lot of money that you may not get back. It will sour the relationship with the people you have to live next to.

presumably though if it’s unsold it would be something the house builder had to rectify

what might give further context is that it’s in a spot where one might build an extension

 

[Maccapacca]

Courts don’t like this triviality. Both sides could spend thousands over something that isn’t harming anything.

A word of caution is necessary here, however: a gutter overhanging many feet up in the air may be considered by the court as a trivial trespass. Unless you can show some real harm or serious implication requiring its removal, then the court may not order its removal and can penalise parties for bringing trivial cases.

https://www.lyonsdavidson.co.uk/can-homeowners-overhanging-eaves-gutters/

 

[dirtychinchilla]

Courts don’t like this triviality. Both sides could spend thousands over something that isn’t harming anything.



https://www.lyonsdavidson.co.uk/can-homeowners-overhanging-eaves-gutters/

well that interesting, I’ll have a read. Thank you

 

[Semple]

Ok maybe a better question would be what is the legal standing assuming both houses are still for sale? It crosses a property boundary presumably making it the property of the house whose boundary it crosses over to at that point?

if there’s a drainage issue, who would be responsible?

take the emotional issue of a neighbour out of it

I think you'd have been better off starting with this.

Everyone trying to guess what the situation is causes advice to change.

So these are both new build properties that currently have no ownership, but one house has a garage that overhangs the property.

Personally if it's the roof there's not much you can do - they're not going to knock it down to move it a foot the other way.

Guttering you could probably ask them to move the downpipe so it's the other end.

But ultimately it's going to be very close to the property, and if it rains heavy you may well find rainwater running straight off the roof and missing part of the gutter and landing into the neighbouring property.

If you can't accept the way it's been built - then i wouldn't even consider making an offer.

 

[Steampunk]

Ok maybe a better question would be what is the legal standing assuming both houses are still for sale? It crosses a property boundary presumably making it the property of the house whose boundary it crosses over to at that point?

It's not your property. It's their soffets and guttering on your property. You can't just take it down, but it is effectively illegally on your property, and you can ask them to move it. They won't because of the cost, and are just gambling that you won't be willing to spend a load of money taking it to court.

if there’s a drainage issue, who would be responsible?

take the emotional issue of a neighbour out of it

Are you saying this neighbour's garage has downpipes that drop the rainwater from the garage roof onto your land? I don't think that's allowed.

There are rules about not being able to just dump your land's water drainage onto your neighbour, but you'll have to hunt them out. Basically a property has to deal with their own drainage in a sensible way. Either drains to rain waterways, soakaways, etc. For example, my neighbour has a flat roofed extension at the back of his house. He can't just funnel the rainwater onto my garden. He either has to get permission from the water company to connect it to the rainwater drains, or his guttering takes the water to drainage pipes that go to the soakaway at the end of his garden.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

Are you saying this neighbour's garage has downpipes that drop the rainwater from the garage roof onto your land? I don't think that's allowed.

There are rules about not being able to just dump your land's water drainage onto your neighbour, but you'll have to hunt them out. Basically a property has to deal with their own drainage in a sensible way. Either drains to rain waterways, soakaways, etc. For example, my neighbour has a flat roofed extension at the back of his house. He can't just funnel the rainwater onto my garden. He either has to get permission from the water company to connect it to the rainwater drains, or his guttering takes the water to drainage pipes that go to the soakaway at the end of his garden.

That’s the potential scenario, yes. In this case it would be that the gutter comes down through this property’s airspace connecting to a drain under the property via the driveway.

 

[Steampunk]

presumably though if it’s unsold it would be something the house builder had to rectify

what might give further context is that it’s in a spot where one might build an extension

Are you going to build an extension or have planning permission to do so? Pretty difficult to prove a loss or inconvenience if not.

 

[200sols]

Just another example of shoddy newbuilds. If they can't even get the basics right then who knows what bodges they have made on the actual house.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

Are you going to build an extension or have planning permission to do so? Pretty difficult to prove a loss or inconvenience if not.

It is in a position where you might build a garage or shed which would be affected by the position of the eaves and guttering.

 

[Steampunk]

It is in a position where you might build a garage or shed which would be affected by the position of the eaves and guttering.

If that's what you want to do, then walk away. It will be far cheaper than getting someone else to pay to have a garage torn down and moved six inches back from the property line so you can put your own garage in. Unless your neighbour is willing to let you redo all their guttering and then put a garage next to theirs and then join your garage roof to theirs to make it one big roof that you can then both have guttering to deal with the rain, it's just going to be hassle.

Neighbour issues can be awful, if there's anything in a house that is going to prompt them, then it's not worth it.