Land owner uncontactable

[Keef]

Before retiring, I was a conveyancer for 45 years. I can tell you categorically that enquires of this nature about neighbouring land do not form part of a solicitor's remit for house purchase and you will be charged extra, perhaps now £200 per hour.  If you are using one of the out-of-town 'conveyancing factories' then you may find that they will not touch it because their experience is with routine registered land titles only and you will have to employ another, local solicitor to look into things. And, in the end, although you may accept a situation your mortgage lender may not and your conveyancing solicitor will have to report chapter and verse to your lender, who will probably not want to know and may decline your mortgage. It's the old story = time v money. If you and the seller and the rest of the chain and the hungry estate agents (desperate to get paid) can all wait weeks whilst this is looked into, with no guarantee of a solution, then fine....but they won't and you may lose the sale of your own property if you go down this path because people will want to get on and won't wait while you chase a possibly lost cause. My advice would be to suck it up find another property to buy.

[daveatdave]

4 hours ago, Keef said:

Before retiring, I was a conveyancer for 45 years. I can tell you categorically that enquires of this nature about neighbouring land do not form part of a solicitor's remit for house purchase and you will be charged extra, perhaps now £200 per hour.  If you are using one of the out-of-town 'conveyancing factories' then you may find that they will not touch it because their experience is with routine registered land titles only and you will have to employ another, local solicitor to look into things. And, in the end, although you may accept a situation your mortgage lender may not and your conveyancing solicitor will have to report chapter and verse to your lender, who will probably not want to know and may decline your mortgage. It's the old story = time v money. If you and the seller and the rest of the chain and the hungry estate agents (desperate to get paid) can all wait weeks whilst this is looked into, with no guarantee of a solution, then fine....but they won't and you may lose the sale of your own property if you go down this path because people will want to get on and won't wait while you chase a possibly lost cause. My advice would be to suck it up find another property to buy.

i had a quote from a solicitor a couple of weeks back for a litigation matter and it was £265 plus vat per hour 

[daltontrees]

Aoother arbtalk thread where no-one answers the question put by the OP.

 

No, you can't cut down the tree on adjacent land. Not lawfully in any circumstances unless with the owner's permission. You could cut back roots and branches to the boundary. You may be able to mitigate or eliminate the adverse effects of the tree on your soils in various ways that do not involve removing the tree.

[Muddy42]

To be fair the original post was a bit of a ramble with two questions.  It doesn't matter anyway, because the OP seems to have vanished anyway.  Checking the land registry would be an obvious first step.

[AHPP]

1 hour ago, daltontrees said:

 

No, you can't cut down the tree on adjacent land. Not lawfully in any circumstances unless with the owner's permission.

 

Never say never. There will be some necessity type defences if you're saving a black man from being lynched or something. Less so with woolly worries of wrongs/torts. 

Edited May 24 by AHPP

[Steven P]

2 hours ago, daltontrees said:

Another arbtalk thread where no-one answers the question put by the OP.

 

We do this so well too.

 

To the OP - it is their tree, they can do what they want with it though you can try to persuade them otherwise if you can contact them.

 

If the potential new house has been underpinned is there a guarantee for the work? That might bring some peace of mind that if it continues with subsidence you might be able to get it fixed with that.

 

As for the law of trees - what sort of distances are we talking about. When was the tree planted, when was the house built (which came first?) - house came first then the actions of whoever planted the tree might be a mitigating factor, tree came first then it is the builders who never built the house to consider the environment.

[daltontrees]

2 hours ago, AHPP said:

 

Never say never. There will be some necessity type defences if you're saving a black man from being lynched or something. Less so with woolly worries of wrongs/torts. 

Well one could possibly contrive a situation where it's justifiable, but not in the normal business of life. I cant even think of one.

[daltontrees]

3 hours ago, Muddy42 said:

To be fair the original post was a bit of a ramble with two questions.  It doesn't matter anyway, because the OP seems to have vanished anyway.  Checking the land registry would be an obvious first step.

I can't be bothered replying to first time posters becuase they usually do vanish if no-one has given them an authoritative, detailed, free, copper-bottomed solution to their vague problem within say 10 minutes.

 

Arbtalk should have an AI engine for such requests, it could generate eloquent generic advice without saying anything useful or commital. We could call it Arbificial Intelligence.

[daltontrees]

53 minutes ago, Steven P said:

 

We do this so well too.

 

To the OP - it is their tree, they can do what they want with it though you can try to persuade them otherwise if you can contact them.

 

If the potential new house has been underpinned is there a guarantee for the work? That might bring some peace of mind that if it continues with subsidence you might be able to get it fixed with that.

 

As for the law of trees - what sort of distances are we talking about. When was the tree planted, when was the house built (which came first?) - house came first then the actions of whoever planted the tree might be a mitigating factor, tree came first then it is the builders who never built the house to consider the environment.

It doesn't matter what came first. At law, encroachment is negligence if it causes foreseeable damage.

[Steven P]

Yes, tree roots are probably encroaching on their land, report says causing damage. However if the builders built to a certain standard knowing that there was a maturing tree within a distance (Oak, 30m?), then surely some responsibility must go back to the designer of the building?