Is a boundary survey advisable for this Dublin house?

omegab

We are sale agreed on a house in North Dublin. The detached house was built approximately 40 years ago and is surrounded on 3.5 sides by solid cement walls. On the remaining piece, between us and the neighbour there is grass and a narrow cement path against the house, the outer edge of which appears to join up with the boundary walls.

My question is whether getting a boundary survey done before the purchase is needed? My solicitor has recommended checking the boundaries and from talking with two surveyors they reckoned there was little to be gained, and that in effect the longstanding physical walls would prevail through adverse possession.

The land registry maps are only approximate and appear correct in shape and proportion.

Are party walls jointly owned?

Thoughts? Recommendations?

flutered

a boundry survey is always a necessity, hereabouts a guy who sold a lot of sites made plenty money out of it, he would roughly mark out the site, the purchaser would fence it off, then lo and behold it was larger than agreed

omegab

In this case though, what are the potential issues that may arise?

Youre inviting trouble.

So they do a detailed survey and find that one of the walls is half a meter too close to your property. Either your purchase will fall through, you'll end up in the high court paying huge legal fees on a case you'll probably lose, not to mention that you'll fall out with your new neighbours who, most likely, would be totally unaware of any boundary issue.

If your surveyors are happy to give a general assurance, go with this.

Samuel T. Cogley

I was just asked to look at the map, looked at it, it was wrong - went ahead anyway sort it out later.

That said I could afford to lose the piece of land in question.