THE BOTHER OF BOUNDARIES
You may not be disposed to raise as a conveyancing preliminary enquiry ‘is the property haunted?’, although I would advocate it. Pedants might more usefully now throw in as a supplement to standard questions: ‘Has the seller or any predecessor in title been a party to an oral or written boundary demarcation agreement as referred to in White v Alder [2025] EWCA Civ 392 and, if so, provide full details?’ This is an agreement the purpose of which is to define a previously unclear or uncertain boundary, even if it includes the conscious or unconscious transfer of a trivial amount of land. It is to be distinguished from an agreement whose purpose is to move a boundary so as to transfer land from one neighbour to another and which would be subject to the necessary formalities for land transfer.
The Court of Appeal has ruled in White that a boundary demarcation agreement
