House sale

[lynd]

I know this should properly go on legal but DIY often have a better grip of such things.

I have a quandary.

My neighbour moved out rather strangely back at the end of November , having done a flit ( old lady house-sitting told me they had gone on holiday).

I never saw the house up for sale or anything but suddenly in January new neighbours knocked on my door and introduced themselves as the new neighbours.

They were pretty vague about the last owners and even about themselves. First they said they were renting, then they said they owned the house.

Anyway, being a nosy sort I looked up the sale of the house on one of those land registry sites ( wondered how and what price they sold for since five houses here have been up for sale for over two years and remain unsold - and this house it seems was sold lock stock and barrel in a month and I never even saw it advertised.

I cannot find the house listed on the sites even though every other house which has sold in the village in the last five years is there.

Now I know there might be an error but its strange because the house was also sold ( oddly) back in 2002 ( old neighbours moved to France). They "sold" suddenly after having the house on the market for three years!

This bothers me a bit since new neighbour comes down one weekend a month but still hasn't moved in but I hear say they are going to run a business in Alpacas , including a visitor centre here ( next door to me!)

We live up a private ( unadopted) lane and I have to repair my own section of lane. large numbers of visitors to alpaca haven would cause me great expense.

Do they need planning permission to run a visitor centre( cant see them needing it to graze alpaca on pasture land . Previous neighbour had a horse there.

I know the above is a bit long but I would like to know a) if the house has been sold

b) what my new - to be - neighbours may be up to.

Is he squatting and the house isn't yet his?

Is it simply a problem on the land registry?

Anyone seen anything like it before.

[Grunff]

If it has, it will appear on the land registry site within 6 months max. Don't rely on other sites who buy searches from the LR - they use incomplete databases.

You can buy a copy of the LR entry for £2 here:

Like what? A house sale?

[Peter Crosland]

It costs £2 to get a copy of the specific Land Registry entry for a property. This can be done online at

at the results are available in seconds. Grazing alpaca does not need planning approval assuming it is already agricultural land but a visitor centre or any building would.

Peter Crosland

[Grunff]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Nice to see you're sticking to your usual misleading statements Peter. Time to copy the killfile over from my desktop to my laptop.

[Richard Faulkner]

What's misleading?

[Grunff]

That "any building would" need planning approval - this is something which Peter is very fond of repeating, totally ignoring Permitted Development.

[Peter Crosland]

It was not misleading! A visitor centre certtainly WOULD need permission and it is rare indeed for their to be permitted developement on agrigcultrural land.

See above. If you can't offer any constructive advice why give any?

Peter Crosland

[Grunff]

It was.

True.

Completely untrue!

[Owain]

A visitor centre wouldn't count as an agricultural building anyway, and possibly such land use would not count as agricultural, so change of use planning permission might be required for a visitor centre even without any building requiring permission.

If the "pasture" is within the curtilage of a dwelling ie garden ground it is not agricultural; change of use planning permission might again be needed.

Finally, regarding the track, this depends on the exact nature of the deeds over who owns what and who has what rights to pass over whose land for what purposes. If the agreement permits domestic use, a visitor centre or even an alpaca farm would probably be outwith such consent.

On the positive side, the new neighbours came round and introduced themselves, so even if they are total oddballs at least they seem to be fairly amiable oddballs and hopefully open to discussion.

Owain

[Dave Fawthrop]

|Do they need planning permission to run a visitor centre( cant see them |needing it to graze alpaca on pasture land . Previous neighbour had a horse |there.

Assuming that the house has planning permission for a *residential* property, and not a farm, change of use to planning permission would be required. Your local council has a planning department. Ours has a "Duty Planning Officer" who answers these sort of questions, but there is normally a queue outside the door. Ask the.

[legin]

Don't know how true it is, but a surveyor friend suggested that commercial lendings do not show up on the sites. I could believe this as I have also searched various properties known to have been sold. The majority do have there details available but at least two that I know have been sold don't show up. One a farm house and land, quite believably the subject to commercial lending. The other, going off on a tangent, in a very much residential area. The elderly neighbour to which is convinced that the occupants are subject to a goverment identity/ relocation program. He might be miffed as he wanted to buy the property himself, downsizing, but could not sell his own in time.

[Matt]

There is a long period allowed before properties HAVE to be registered, it's definitely *way* more than 6 months.

[<me9]

2 years, I believe.

[Stuart Noble]

IIRC it's more like 2 years before the solicitor has to advise The Land Registry of the sale.

[DJC]

If there is a mortgage involved then any charge or change thereto will be noted on the land registry documents. I suggest checking with the official land registry site rather than these online house price sites, they are derived from the LR data but do not tell the whole story. If there is a company as owner similar check of the online records at Companies House may be revealing.

Covenants regarding upkeep of the lane should be in your and the neighbours deeds also. Again the records at LR would be the place to start.

As to the question has anyone had a similar experience.

I manage the Mgmt company for a 4 flat conversion. In the early 90s one flat was sold (at the top of the market) to a small-time estate/letting agent, who let the property and was rather reluctant to pay the service charges and ground rents. After some years he announced that he was selling the property to a friend. I received the usual documents from his solicitor but never any details other than the name of the new owner. This made obtaining further service charges and ground rents difficult. Letters to the solicitor requesting the address of the new owner met with no response. Eventualy after maybe two years I received a letter from another firm of solicitors who had been appointed by the Law Society to sort out the business of the original solicitor. I also learnt (by chance) from a national newspaper that the original solicitor had been convicted of extensive fraud against clients and mortgage lenders . I suspect in this case that the flat owner was a party to a fraudulent transaction assisted by the solicitor: the new flat owner being fictitious, the whole transaction a device to transfer the mortgage from one lender to another and thus avoid (in fact defer) repossession.

[Andy Hall]

Certainly the LR entries give the best level of information, but don't give everything that might be useful - for example the amount of the mortgage or of other charges.

That's also true, but information is usually scant. There is a period after the financial year end for filing of accounts and annual return (10 months IIRC) and so information is not very current. Also, small businesses of less than several £M in revenue or balance sheet total do not have to file detailed accounts. Forming much of a picture is difficult. However, you can easily get the names and addresses of the directors and company secretary together with how many other directorships they hold.

This information is cheaply available from their Webcheck service (less than £5).

You can do checks in the opposite directions (e.g. look up a list of companies for which a person is a director. This is a way to get a view of more of their business activities. However, being a director does not necessarily imply an active role in a company. Also, it's necessary to be a member of the Companies House Direct service (£5/month subscription) to access it.

Changes in directorships appear quite quickly on the CH web site.

They are to a point, but may not have detail of some covenants - e.g. not driving herds of goats along the lane, not running a business and so on.

[DJC]

...

Accounts 10 months, Annual return has to be done within a month of due date and must be done at no more than 12 month intervals.

Agreed both LR and CH records can say little, but ofen it is possble to read between the lines; what is not said can be revealing.