416 thoughts on “My Seller Lied To Me! When Is It Property Misrepresentation?”
We purchased a house this winter with exchange of contract being late Jan 20 and completion 27th Feb 20.
I found out this weekend that our next door property had outline planning permission for 5 houses agreed on 21st Feb 20 (application was submitted in March 19) and these house will now replace our countryside views and will directly overlook my property and garden.
Our sellers marked yes that they were aware of developments but when we sought clarification from them they stated that the planning or developments they were aware of were 3 miles away, i.e not next door. There is also a planning application in for the farm two doors further down which we were not alerted to. I am aware from both parties that the sellers were aware of the plans and I have also obtained the letter they were sent from the planning department informing them of the application and inviting comments.
Would we have grounds for a claim here? I would not have bought the house if I was aware of the build that will take place and most certainly not from the price we agreed.
Nearby planning proposals discovered after completion is always a contentious issue and a disappointment to the buyer. The degree to which a seller needs to disclose such proposals is not “black and white” and every case is different. However, there is a case called Thorp v Abbotts [2015] EWHC 23142 (Ch) which pithily deals with the point to a large extent. In short, if a seller has received actual notice of a planning application, this is generally enough to say that it is something which the seller should disclose. However, if it is merely a possibility that there would be development taking place, this is less likely to trigger that requirement. We can generally find out when notices were sent out from the relevant council, as you appear to have helpfully done.
If nothing had been said about the position at all, i.e. had no answer on the point been given, then it would be unlikely that there would be a claim for misrepresentation. This is because generally, there has to be an actual statement about some factual circumstances; merely saying nothing is rarely enough and the buyer would be considered to be proceeding at their own risk. Here, it seems that the seller has been selective in the information provided. Even if they had answered honestly, insofar as they were unaware, this might not be overly relevant to any defence of a claim. You are quite right to identify that some development three miles away has been mentioned and that the implication from this is that they have investigated the position and are not aware of any planning next door. This might be considered a “half-truth”, insofar as it might be correct that there are developments proposed some miles away but it is what is left unsaid which is misleading, namely that development next door is also proposed.
There may very well be grounds for a claim here but we would need to think about when the property information form was completed and when the notice was received. If the notice was received after the property information form was completed, we will also need to consider what duty there would be on the seller to update the information.
Also, in terms of the value of your claim, this would be something a valuer would need to advise on. This is because the value of your claim, as you allude to, is going to be based on the difference between what you paid and what a reasonable person would have paid for it. An estate agent might be able to give you an indication, but proper valuation evidence is likely to be required. It could be that the development in fact increases the amenity value of your property, but this would normally happen if things such as shops and facilities were proposed nearby, rather than residential housing.
Do feel free to get in touch if you would like to explore the matter further with us.
The notification of the development next door was sent to the seller on 7th March 2019. The notification of the development three doors down was sent in October 2019. The TA6 and TA10 forms were requested and sent to us in January 2020. The planning information submitted shows the exact positioning of the proposed builds (even the outline planning application had this). This means the seller was aware of the most imposing development 10 months prior to submitting the information to us.
There are no amenities being added to the development. It is a village location and they are purely taking away from the green land and uninterrupted countryside views rather than adding anything.
This website is not really the forum on which we can provide specific legal advice. Whilst we can provide general advice and guidance based on legal principles, it is not a substitution for proper legal advice, taking into account the nuances of any particular case.
From what you have said, it may very well be that there is a case here. However, we would need to investigate the matter in a bit more detail before we could provide anything more conclusive. There are other aspects to the matter which also need to be considered, for example, the question of reliance. It is necessary for the aggrieved party to a contract to have relied on the misrepresentation when entering into a contact for a claim to exist. It does not have to be a sole reliance, but it does need to be material. If there is something in the paperwork which suggests or may give rise to a defence that you did not rely on the misrepresentation, this is important to consider.
There may also be extended searches on the file (but normally, most searches undertaken relate to only the property in question) which might refer to the planning applications in some form. Whilst the ability to discover the truth of the matter is not generally fatal to a claim, the availability of other information might be relevant to any contributory loss.
In all litigious matters, whether or not a defence to any claim exists is something which needs to be considered from an early stage and throughout as the matter goes on. The strength of any defence is a factor to consider when deciding on the best way to approach the position.
If you would like to get in touch, we would be happy to discuss the position with you and see if we can assist. Contact details are on our contact page, https://cunningtons.co.uk/contact/
Hi, I have purchased a 4 bed detached in March 2020, which was marketed as having allocated parking at the rear, but because of the Covid pandemic, the exchange and completion were done simultaneously. The land registry title plan shows that the parking area is within my boundary, however it transpires that the vendor had retained this area of land, and I was then sent an amended title plan. The surveyor who carried out the homebuyers survey was also told by the person allowing him access to the property that it came with an allocated parking space. On the property information form, the vendor did not answer the question relating to parking but did state that there had been no changes to the boundary in the last 20 years (Clearly a lie if they had retained the parking area for their own use as they also own the property next door.) It is coating me in the region of £10000 to create off-road parking to the property. Do I have a case of property misrepresentation against the vendor?
It is probably unlikely that there is a claim for misrepresentation here against the buyer. If they were only intending to retain the parking space, there would have presumably been no changes to the boundary at that point in time. The proposed changes to the boundaries would have been set out in the contract itself. This would likely have been in the form of an offer to sell you just part of the property (i.e. it might not expressly state that the parking space was excluded from the sale). However, there may be some other basis of claim if there was a deliberate attempt to conceal the fact that the parking space was to be retained or lead you to believe that it was part of the sale when it was not. The estate agent’s particulars are unlikely to be overly helpful in this regard. These are more of a marketing tool and the legal detail of what is or is not being sold is contained in the contract.
If your solicitor has missed or failed to advise you on an obvious point, so far as the retention of the parking space was easy to spot, then there could be scope for a professional negligence claim. It might be the case that the parking space is a separate title (i.e. a piece of land with a different Land Registry number) and sometimes this can lead to confusion. However, it would be unusual for a solicitor not to limit the scope of their retainer, and ask the client to expressly confirm that they understand what it is that they are buying. This is because solicitors are not surveyors and would not undertake a site visit with any plans even if they were qualified to say where boundaries and the like are. They will therefore generally ask the client to check the plans with their surveyor and confirm that this is what they intend to buy.
As for the surveyor, there may be a negligence case here, but it will again depend on what the surveyor was told, understood and was asked to advise on.
Whilst we cannot provide legal advice via this website, we also cannot really provide any particularly helpful guidance for you without considering the documentation in detail. From what you have said, there are a lot of potential variables. We would need to see the title documentation (these are the documents that the Land Registry has), the terms of the contract, what you were advised about it and the correspondence between the parties. All of this will be relevant to any potential claim.
We would be happy to give you a quote for reviewing the matter for you, if you would like to get in touch.
Hi Wondering if you could offer some insight, I recently sold a property and I still keep in touch with my old next door neighbour. I’m hearing that from him that the buyer of our previous property is looking into bringing a case against me for misrepresentation on the grounds that I gave inaccurate information regarding boundry agreements.
Basically, there were no fences separating the properties until 1970 and the owners could effectively access each others gardens. After the fences were erected the properties were bought and sold a number of times and showed the fence lines as the boundary in red on the plan attached the title deeds however, there was no mention of the boundaries either formal or informal on the title deeds and I know believe that the agreement was not ever formalised. I genuinely did not know that agreement was not formal.
I purchased the property in 2015 and sold 5 years later believing that the boundaries were formal and stated this on the property information form i submitted to the seller. its been 3 months since the sale and i’m worried about what the implications of this ‘honest’ error may be, should I be concerned ? and hypothetically what sort of damages could I be looking at ? I would also add that the house was sold for around £25,000 under the market value and that the fences have been there for the last 50 years
There are broadly three types of misrepresentation. Fraudulent misrepresentation takes place when a party to a contract makes a false statement that they know is untrue. A reckless or negligent misrepresentation occurs when someone makes a false statement which they do not check is correct or do not care whether or not it is misleading. An innocent misrepresentation occurs when a party to the contract makes a false statement which they believe is true.
On the face of it, from what you have described, you may have said something which is incorrect but believed it to be true. This could therefore be an innocent misrepresentation but we are unable to say conclusively. Even if there has been a misrepresentation, this is not to say that there would be no defence or basis to mitigate any claim, if a claim is even pursued.
As we have said in other posts above, we cannot give legal advice in this forum. We are only able to provide general guidance and pointers. This is because the specifics of any case will always differ. In this particular matter what was specifically said and what was understood and relied upon by the buyers will be very important. Non-material representations would carry less weight, particularly if the contractual terms are such that the buyer is deemed to have checked and been satisfied with the extent of the property.
To provide you with some comfort, unless they have been determined, all Land Registry title plans (the ones with the red lines) show general boundaries. They do not show specifically where the boundary line is. In law, a boundary is a line of “indeterminable width” between to pieces of land. In plain English and put into context, were that red line to be drawn on the physical ground, it would be very wide and would cover a piece of land not owned by anyone. Therefore the lines on the vast majority of Land Registry plans just show the approximate location of the boundary. Perhaps you are being told something second-hand and there is some confusion?
Historical deeds are often lost to time. They are also of limited value these days for a number of reasons. One exception to this is boundary disputes, where measurements can sometimes be found. A lot of the time, the deeds are silent on the location of the boundary, in which case a surveyor will have to use their best judgment and opinion as to where the boundary line may be. In reality, only a qualified surveyor can tell you where a boundary line is and sometimes, even that is an just an informed opinion.
Also, the property information form itself is generally aimed in this respect on existing informal arrangements which cannot be discovered by looking at the title deeds by solicitors. For example, if oral permission has been given to a neighbour to walk over the land when they want. There is case law which suggests that the property information form is designed to be answered by lay persons, and therefore the Court will consider whether or not the answer given was a material misrepresentation against this backdrop, to an extent. We cannot imagine that a lay person would be expected to give a detailed legal answer or take the existence of Land Registry lines as anything but formal.
In terms of damages, the measure of damages would probably be the cost of resolving the matter. If evidence that the fences have been in place for more than 10 years can be provided, then the buyer would potentially be able to “claim” adverse possession. This effectively means that the buyer could apply to the Land Registry to become the owner of any disputed land. This is not usually particularly costly. It might be the case that there is no dispute at all with neighbours about the location of the boundary.
Whilst we could look into the position for you in more detail, it might be the case that no claim is ever pursued. Whilst we can provide speculative advice, most of the time it is worthwhile waiting for the other side to make contact. They may choose not to pursue a claim at all. If a claim is pursued, a formal letter of claim should be sent first; the Courts expect this step to be taken and for the responding party to be given time to investigate and respond to it.
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We purchased a house this winter with exchange of contract being late Jan 20 and completion 27th Feb 20.
I found out this weekend that our next door property had outline planning permission for 5 houses agreed on 21st Feb 20 (application was submitted in March 19) and these house will now replace our countryside views and will directly overlook my property and garden.
Our sellers marked yes that they were aware of developments but when we sought clarification from them they stated that the planning or developments they were aware of were 3 miles away, i.e not next door. There is also a planning application in for the farm two doors further down which we were not alerted to. I am aware from both parties that the sellers were aware of the plans and I have also obtained the letter they were sent from the planning department informing them of the application and inviting comments.
Would we have grounds for a claim here? I would not have bought the house if I was aware of the build that will take place and most certainly not from the price we agreed.
Thank you for your comment Sam.
Nearby planning proposals discovered after completion is always a contentious issue and a disappointment to the buyer. The degree to which a seller needs to disclose such proposals is not “black and white” and every case is different. However, there is a case called Thorp v Abbotts [2015] EWHC 23142 (Ch) which pithily deals with the point to a large extent. In short, if a seller has received actual notice of a planning application, this is generally enough to say that it is something which the seller should disclose. However, if it is merely a possibility that there would be development taking place, this is less likely to trigger that requirement. We can generally find out when notices were sent out from the relevant council, as you appear to have helpfully done.
If nothing had been said about the position at all, i.e. had no answer on the point been given, then it would be unlikely that there would be a claim for misrepresentation. This is because generally, there has to be an actual statement about some factual circumstances; merely saying nothing is rarely enough and the buyer would be considered to be proceeding at their own risk. Here, it seems that the seller has been selective in the information provided. Even if they had answered honestly, insofar as they were unaware, this might not be overly relevant to any defence of a claim. You are quite right to identify that some development three miles away has been mentioned and that the implication from this is that they have investigated the position and are not aware of any planning next door. This might be considered a “half-truth”, insofar as it might be correct that there are developments proposed some miles away but it is what is left unsaid which is misleading, namely that development next door is also proposed.
There may very well be grounds for a claim here but we would need to think about when the property information form was completed and when the notice was received. If the notice was received after the property information form was completed, we will also need to consider what duty there would be on the seller to update the information.
Also, in terms of the value of your claim, this would be something a valuer would need to advise on. This is because the value of your claim, as you allude to, is going to be based on the difference between what you paid and what a reasonable person would have paid for it. An estate agent might be able to give you an indication, but proper valuation evidence is likely to be required. It could be that the development in fact increases the amenity value of your property, but this would normally happen if things such as shops and facilities were proposed nearby, rather than residential housing.
Do feel free to get in touch if you would like to explore the matter further with us.
Hi Mark
Thank you for your response.
The notification of the development next door was sent to the seller on 7th March 2019. The notification of the development three doors down was sent in October 2019. The TA6 and TA10 forms were requested and sent to us in January 2020. The planning information submitted shows the exact positioning of the proposed builds (even the outline planning application had this). This means the seller was aware of the most imposing development 10 months prior to submitting the information to us.
There are no amenities being added to the development. It is a village location and they are purely taking away from the green land and uninterrupted countryside views rather than adding anything.
Thank you for your further comment.
This website is not really the forum on which we can provide specific legal advice. Whilst we can provide general advice and guidance based on legal principles, it is not a substitution for proper legal advice, taking into account the nuances of any particular case.
From what you have said, it may very well be that there is a case here. However, we would need to investigate the matter in a bit more detail before we could provide anything more conclusive. There are other aspects to the matter which also need to be considered, for example, the question of reliance. It is necessary for the aggrieved party to a contract to have relied on the misrepresentation when entering into a contact for a claim to exist. It does not have to be a sole reliance, but it does need to be material. If there is something in the paperwork which suggests or may give rise to a defence that you did not rely on the misrepresentation, this is important to consider.
There may also be extended searches on the file (but normally, most searches undertaken relate to only the property in question) which might refer to the planning applications in some form. Whilst the ability to discover the truth of the matter is not generally fatal to a claim, the availability of other information might be relevant to any contributory loss.
In all litigious matters, whether or not a defence to any claim exists is something which needs to be considered from an early stage and throughout as the matter goes on. The strength of any defence is a factor to consider when deciding on the best way to approach the position.
If you would like to get in touch, we would be happy to discuss the position with you and see if we can assist. Contact details are on our contact page, https://cunningtons.co.uk/contact/
Hi, I have purchased a 4 bed detached in March 2020, which was marketed as having allocated parking at the rear, but because of the Covid pandemic,
the exchange and completion were done simultaneously. The land registry title plan shows that the parking area is within my boundary, however it transpires that the vendor had retained this area of land, and I was then sent an amended title plan. The surveyor who carried out the homebuyers survey
was also told by the person allowing him access to the property that it came with an allocated parking space. On the property information form, the vendor
did not answer the question relating to parking but did state that there had been no changes to the boundary in the last 20 years (Clearly a lie if they had retained the parking area for their own use as they also own the property next door.) It is coating me in the region of £10000 to create off-road parking to the property. Do I have a case of property misrepresentation against the vendor?
Thank you for your comment.
It is probably unlikely that there is a claim for misrepresentation here against the buyer. If they were only intending to retain the parking space, there would have presumably been no changes to the boundary at that point in time. The proposed changes to the boundaries would have been set out in the contract itself. This would likely have been in the form of an offer to sell you just part of the property (i.e. it might not expressly state that the parking space was excluded from the sale). However, there may be some other basis of claim if there was a deliberate attempt to conceal the fact that the parking space was to be retained or lead you to believe that it was part of the sale when it was not. The estate agent’s particulars are unlikely to be overly helpful in this regard. These are more of a marketing tool and the legal detail of what is or is not being sold is contained in the contract.
If your solicitor has missed or failed to advise you on an obvious point, so far as the retention of the parking space was easy to spot, then there could be scope for a professional negligence claim. It might be the case that the parking space is a separate title (i.e. a piece of land with a different Land Registry number) and sometimes this can lead to confusion. However, it would be unusual for a solicitor not to limit the scope of their retainer, and ask the client to expressly confirm that they understand what it is that they are buying. This is because solicitors are not surveyors and would not undertake a site visit with any plans even if they were qualified to say where boundaries and the like are. They will therefore generally ask the client to check the plans with their surveyor and confirm that this is what they intend to buy.
As for the surveyor, there may be a negligence case here, but it will again depend on what the surveyor was told, understood and was asked to advise on.
Whilst we cannot provide legal advice via this website, we also cannot really provide any particularly helpful guidance for you without considering the documentation in detail. From what you have said, there are a lot of potential variables. We would need to see the title documentation (these are the documents that the Land Registry has), the terms of the contract, what you were advised about it and the correspondence between the parties. All of this will be relevant to any potential claim.
We would be happy to give you a quote for reviewing the matter for you, if you would like to get in touch.
Hi Wondering if you could offer some insight, I recently sold a property and I still keep in touch with my old next door neighbour.
I’m hearing that from him that the buyer of our previous property is looking into bringing a case against me for misrepresentation on the grounds that I gave inaccurate information regarding boundry agreements.
Basically, there were no fences separating the properties until 1970 and the owners could effectively access each others gardens. After the fences were erected the properties were bought and sold a number of times and showed the fence lines as the boundary in red on the plan attached the title deeds however, there was no mention of the boundaries either formal or informal on the title deeds and I know believe that the agreement was not ever formalised. I genuinely did not know that agreement was not formal.
I purchased the property in 2015 and sold 5 years later believing that the boundaries were formal and stated this on the property information form i submitted to the seller. its been 3 months since the sale and i’m worried about what the implications of this ‘honest’ error may be, should I be concerned ? and hypothetically what sort of damages could I be looking at ? I would also add that the house was sold for around £25,000 under the market value and that the fences have been there for the last 50 years
Many thanks
Thank you for your comment David.
There are broadly three types of misrepresentation. Fraudulent misrepresentation takes place when a party to a contract makes a false statement that they know is untrue. A reckless or negligent misrepresentation occurs when someone makes a false statement which they do not check is correct or do not care whether or not it is misleading. An innocent misrepresentation occurs when a party to the contract makes a false statement which they believe is true.
On the face of it, from what you have described, you may have said something which is incorrect but believed it to be true. This could therefore be an innocent misrepresentation but we are unable to say conclusively. Even if there has been a misrepresentation, this is not to say that there would be no defence or basis to mitigate any claim, if a claim is even pursued.
As we have said in other posts above, we cannot give legal advice in this forum. We are only able to provide general guidance and pointers. This is because the specifics of any case will always differ. In this particular matter what was specifically said and what was understood and relied upon by the buyers will be very important. Non-material representations would carry less weight, particularly if the contractual terms are such that the buyer is deemed to have checked and been satisfied with the extent of the property.
To provide you with some comfort, unless they have been determined, all Land Registry title plans (the ones with the red lines) show general boundaries. They do not show specifically where the boundary line is. In law, a boundary is a line of “indeterminable width” between to pieces of land. In plain English and put into context, were that red line to be drawn on the physical ground, it would be very wide and would cover a piece of land not owned by anyone. Therefore the lines on the vast majority of Land Registry plans just show the approximate location of the boundary. Perhaps you are being told something second-hand and there is some confusion?
Historical deeds are often lost to time. They are also of limited value these days for a number of reasons. One exception to this is boundary disputes, where measurements can sometimes be found. A lot of the time, the deeds are silent on the location of the boundary, in which case a surveyor will have to use their best judgment and opinion as to where the boundary line may be. In reality, only a qualified surveyor can tell you where a boundary line is and sometimes, even that is an just an informed opinion.
Also, the property information form itself is generally aimed in this respect on existing informal arrangements which cannot be discovered by looking at the title deeds by solicitors. For example, if oral permission has been given to a neighbour to walk over the land when they want. There is case law which suggests that the property information form is designed to be answered by lay persons, and therefore the Court will consider whether or not the answer given was a material misrepresentation against this backdrop, to an extent. We cannot imagine that a lay person would be expected to give a detailed legal answer or take the existence of Land Registry lines as anything but formal.
In terms of damages, the measure of damages would probably be the cost of resolving the matter. If evidence that the fences have been in place for more than 10 years can be provided, then the buyer would potentially be able to “claim” adverse possession. This effectively means that the buyer could apply to the Land Registry to become the owner of any disputed land. This is not usually particularly costly. It might be the case that there is no dispute at all with neighbours about the location of the boundary.
Whilst we could look into the position for you in more detail, it might be the case that no claim is ever pursued. Whilst we can provide speculative advice, most of the time it is worthwhile waiting for the other side to make contact. They may choose not to pursue a claim at all. If a claim is pursued, a formal letter of claim should be sent first; the Courts expect this step to be taken and for the responding party to be given time to investigate and respond to it.
We hope this is of some assistance.