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Hello everyone,
Can anyone help advise us with the following !
We are presently trying to buy a 200 year old property in Asturias. We are using the services of an English surveyor and independant lawyer.
The house comes with 1800 m2 of land. Our problem is that at present we seem to have 3 versions of what that land is! The estate agents/ owners and neighbours assure us that this is the land attached to the house and you can see clear boundaries that make sense – apart from the land runs directly behind the neighbours house with nothing to presently separate it off. This is the land as we would like it to be.
The catastral plans, which I have been told by our surveyor are notoriously outdated, show that the present owner actually seems to own nearly 2000m2, with the land randomly drawn over the area of the house and neighbouring houses..we’d own half the village according to that but only 2/3rd of the land the house is build on and not the finca attached to the garden. The estate agent gave the surveyor something from the land registry but this was just the catastral plan again.
The 3rd is the deeds which states that the fincas boundaries are upto this bit of land owned by joe blogs and that bit owned by fred etc etc. This seems to tally in size and shape and design with that that the estate agent etc said but is again a bit bigger!
The estate agent keeps asking the surveyor why are we worrying as the land is bigger than we thought, ignoring the fact that unless we wanted to make ourselves very unpopular by collecting rent from half the village, the castral plan land is NOT what we want!
Our surveyor is going to go and ask the neighbours and around the village to see if anyone wants to admit to owning the land and is trying to get an appointment with the area architect ,I guess the same as a planning officer in the UK, to see if they have any other plans. He is also trying to get the private contract amended to legally define the land boundaries to show the area that we want to buy (that that the estate agent etc say it is).
Has anyone had any experience of this? How reliable are the castral plans – I know their origins as for tax. Is there anything else we or the surveyor/ lawyer should/ could be checking. (Does anyone know of a layer in Asturias that is not on holiday :?).
We are presently planning on holding off paying any further deposit until this is sorted but have been told that someone else could come along and buy the house, which we do not want happening (we have signed a reservation contract). This will be our family home as we are permenantly moving to Asturias so we want things to be right and plan to be at this house for a long time!
Thanks
Heather
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Thanks Liz but we have already paid out for a lawyer to cover all legal costs upto completion! Have you decided to use that one then? I forgot to say, that it might be useful to bear in mund that the lower the ref number on Costaverde/ Nortecasa properties the longer they have been on the market so the more bargaining power you might have!
Have a great trip next week,
Heather
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Heather,
It may be an idea to submit an official “SOLICITUD DE CERTIFICACION CATASTRAL” in order to get the most up to date Catastral plan. Over the past years in Spain there have been moves to update records and this may not have fed through to the Land Registry.This form can be obtained from the Catastral office which deals with your area. For instance I submitted ours to the Alicante office for a house and land in Altea. There are 3 types of documents you can obtain and the one you should request is the “Certificacion Descriptiva y Grafica”.
If you let me have a fax number I can send you a copy of our request form so your lawyer or architect can help you with it.
Another alternativve is to ask for a legally agreed and defined boundary survey if the adjacent owners involved are not currently in agreement. Your lawyer and architect should be able to advise you on how this is achieved.
I know it may sound time consuming and complicated but one of the oldest problems in Spain with regard to property is that the Land Registry details very rarely matched the catastral plans. The former were used for ownership purposes with the latter merely used for tax calculation purposes. We had a similar problem for years on Fuerteventura and only in 2003 did we actually get the local catastral office to issue details which matched those referred to in the Land Registry.
Good Luck
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Thanks for your reply.
Things have got a little wierd with this one as we got the lawyer to add a clause stating the owner would divide the finca (she inhertited 21 properties when an Aunt died!) and get the catastral plans updated before we brought and they refused the clause.
Our surveyor then went and spoke to all the neighbours (inc the ones who “offically” own the finca according to the catastral plans) who all said the land went with the house, and there are really old walls marking the boundaries.
So we decided we’d take a risk (thought unoffically by the surveyor to be very very small) and buy the house anyway (mainly as we love it, > 200 year old huge house in a small village near a large town..ideal location as 30 mins from hubbies job etc). Worse case senario, we’d lose some garden..but “own” half a village 😕
My husband has just signed the private contract today and the seller has now agreed to get the land divided and update the catastral plans, continuing this process after we own the house/ land. Confused..not us!
Not sure what happens in the unlikely event that someone contests the updates….will get our lawyer to check this ASAP!
Again, thanks for your advice, any further advice welcomed!
Heather
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It is possible for your lawyer to have your final details published in the local “Boletin” so that if anyone does object they have to do so within a fixed time period.
Perhaps you may wish to discuss this with him. There would be a small charge for the publication but your lawyer could give you the details.
Good Luck
Terry English
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