The saga goes on and on……

We received a couple of letters recently from the land registry(The Catastro) which stated that the registry couldn’t be updated due to some problems. See here. So this morning with Sheila we took these letters to the Notary over in Los Llanos expecting to be able to pick up yet another piece of paper to take down the offices of the land registry in Santa Cruz. But no it would seem to be a little more complicated and thus more expensive.

It would seem that on one plot the size of the plot has been updated in the land registry at some point and no longer agrees with the size recorded in the deed, So we have two options; the first is to track down the original seller and get a new deed drawn up with the correct size in it, But as from what I have been told he now lives in Venezuela (a lot of people for La Palma went there in poor times for work, including his farther who built the house in the first place). The other option in to hire an official surveyor for about 200€ to produce an exact measured plan of the plot that we can take to the land registry. This is the least of the problems.

It would seem that the other plot of land is much more complicated. I don’t quite understand the exact problem but it would seem that the ownership registered in the land registry doesn’t tie up with what is on our deed or the previous owners. So in order to sort this out we need to get a affidavit done by the Notary to prove that we are the owners of the land. But in order to do this we need to gather up the following people; The owners of  all the land which borders ours, four witnesses from the area, and uncle Tom Cobley and all. We also need to put adverts in the local press, get a piece of paper from the town hall which says that the land doesn’t belong to them. As you might guess this whole lot is going to be expensive, we were told about 700€.

We are pretty annoyed because we are sure that the previous owner had to do something similar to this before he could sell to us, and it would seem that this didn’t get as far as the land registry.

This has made Helen feel very upset and hasn’t helped with her depression, and with the ongoing stress  it has made of us feel very unsecure.

But on a lighter note when we got home we checked the post box and found a letter from the Land registry which confirmed that the house registration had been updated. So at least we own the house but not just the land around us.