Squatters rights law?

[Amber Brown]

Is there a French equivalent of the squatters' rights law here?

We have a piece of land at the end of our garden that we would like to obtain. We went to the mairie and was told the parcel of land was dead/closed. We went to a notaire 3 years ago to try and arrange to buy it, but we have heard nothing.

In the 10 years we have owned the house, no-one has ever made a claim to it. It's completely landlocked and if someone wanted to use it, they would have to go over the farmer's field to access it.

We're happy to obtain it legally, and pay the local taxes on it, but we've drawn a blank. We want it on our deeds so that in due course we can make a clean sale, and not have to bother explaining all the above. Plus, there are some large trees on the land, which really need some serious work doing as parts of them are dying off and could become dangerous. The branches overhang our legal garden and those of our neighbours (who all assume the land belongs to us anyway).

Any advice or suggestions gratefully received.

(Although this seems to be my first post, I used to belong to this forum a while ago, but let it lapse for some years, so have had to reregister.)

Many thanks.

[Chancer]

Look it up on the plan cadastre (cadastre.gouv.fr or something like that) find the number of the parcelle then go to the hôtel des impôts and ask for the cadastre section, explain to them what you want and they should give you the détails of the owner, they did for me and there was no talk of data protection etc, the Mairie was useless as usual.

[Tancrède]

Exactly what Chancer says.

The site of the cadastre is here :

http://www.cadastre.gouv.fr/scpc/changeLangue.do?lang=en&cty=EN

Find out who the owners are, and make them an offer.  (It worked for me.)