Good morning all. I am a cash buyer currently looking at a three bedroom cottage in rural Cambridgeshire that has come up at what I think is a fair price. The twist is that there is a small parcel of land immediately adjacent, roughly a quarter of an acre, which the vendor also owns but is being sold separately. The vendor has indicated informally that he would sell both to the same buyer if the price was right, but neither his agent nor his solicitor seems to have given much thought to how this would actually work in practice.
I have a few specific questions and I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has dealt with something similar.
a) If I buy both the cottage and the land, is it standard to have them registered under a single title at the Land Registry, or do they remain as two separate titles? I assume it depends on whether the land is already registered separately, but I have not yet obtained the title information.
b) For the land parcel specifically, what searches would a solicitor typically carry out beyond the standard local authority search? I am thinking about things like rights of way, drainage, agricultural use restrictions. The land appears to have been used as a paddock at some point but is now just rough grass.
c) Is there any reason not to proceed with both purchases simultaneously through the same solicitor, or would it be better to complete on the cottage first and negotiate the land separately afterwards?
I realise some of this may come down to what the vendor is willing to agree to, but I want to understand the mechanics before I start making offers. Any experience or pointers would be appreciated.
Camphor, welcome and good questions..
On (a), if the land has its own title number already then it will stay as a separate title unless you apply to merge them after completion. Land Registry will do this but it takes time and there is a small fee. If the land is unregistered (which is quite possible for a paddock in rural Cambs) then the first registration triggered by your purchase could either be standalone or merged with the cottage title. Your solicitor should advise but I would keep them separate initially, gives you more flexibility if you ever want to sell one without the other.
On (b), definitely check for agricultural restrictions. Former paddock land sometimes has restrictive covenants or even agricultural ties that survive the sale. An environmental search is worth doing too, particularly on old rural parcels where people buried all sorts of things over the decades (!!).
On (c), doing both simultaneously through the same solicitor is usually simpler and cheaper but make sure the cottage purchase is not conditional on the land and vice versa. You do not want one holding up the other.
Cheers!
Camphor, one thing worth flagging that Artful has not mentioned is boundaries. When you buy a separate parcel adjacent to an existing property, you want to be absolutely sure the boundary between the two is clearly defined on the title plans before you complete. My neighbour bought a strip of paddock behind his garden about four years ago and ended up in a dispute with the farmer on the other side because the Land Registry general boundary rule meant neither plan was definitive about where the hedge line actually fell. Cost him £2,000 in surveyor fees to sort out something that a properly drawn transfer plan would have prevented.
Also worth asking whether the vendor has ever applied for planning permission on the land, even if it was refused. That shows up on the local authority search and can tell you quite a lot about what the land might realistically be used for in future. A quarter acre with a refused residential application is a very different prospect from one that has never been tested.