lynd wrote:

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.



--
David Clark
http://www.publishing.ucl.ac.uk
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