Help with a Covenant

sparra_legs

I was wondering if anyone can offer any advice, My Uncle is cuurently selling his property its been 8 weeks now since the offer was made and only now has he found out that there is a covenant on his property. the buyers solicitors have adviced that they pull out of the sale unless my uncle provides insurance which is a one off payment of £120 which he is very happy to do as the house has been on the market for what seems like an ages and doesnt want it to fall through for 120 quid!

My question is, neither solicitor can find the covenant which they know was drawn up in 1909! Does anyone know how would we go about trying to find this out??? the strange this is before my uncle owned this property his sister did and neither were informed when there sales went through that this was atached to the property. (in fact we had to explain to his brothering law what it ment lol)

Any help or information is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Debt_Free_Chick

I'm confused.

If our uncle has "found out that there is a covenant on his property" how did he find this out without actually seeing the covenant?

Covenants are usually in the deeds to the property.

Who discovered the covenant and how?

sparra_legs

all we know is that the buyers solicitors have found thaat there is this covenant attached to the house noehter they or we know what is written in it but there is no copy with the deads and that this has to be found. the couple buying his house are young first time buyers so are mega confused by all this.

If it is as they say from 1909 from when the house was built would it still be enforcable?

Thanks

Geenie

Depend if there are still any family around from the original covenant! 1909 is not that long ago, so surprised there sre no details! Can't see how it can be enforced if no record.

DVardysShadow

sparra_legs wrote: »

I was wondering if anyone can offer any advice, My Uncle is cuurently selling his property its been 8 weeks now since the offer was made and only now has he found out that there is a covenant on his property. the buyers solicitors have adviced that they pull out of the sale unless my uncle provides insurance which is a one off payment of £120 which he is very happy to do as the house has been on the market for what seems like an ages and doesnt want it to fall through for 120 quid!

My question is, neither solicitor can find the covenant which they know was drawn up in 1909! Does anyone know how would we go about trying to find this out??? the strange this is before my uncle owned this property his sister did and neither were informed when there sales went through that this was atached to the property. (in fact we had to explain to his brothering law what it ment lol)

Any help or information is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Leave well alone if you are getting the insurance. The Insurance is about something nasty being found in the box and it coming out to bite you. If you open the box, you increase the risk of it biting you, so the insurance may be higher or invalid.

Richard_Webster

I am going to guess what has happened and OP can tell me if this fits in with what he has been told.

This is usually due to sloppy conveyancing. A likely scenario follows:

The title is registered at the Land Registry and there is a note on the register saying that the property is subject to covenants contained in a conveyance dated ....1909 made between XX and YY but neither the original nor an examined copy of it was produced on first registration. Is thta right?

When was the property first registered? Normally in the first section "Property Register" after telling which district the property is in it will say "1. (A date) The freehold land shown edged with red on the plan of the above title filed at the Registry and being [address]" The date is usually the date the title was first registered.

First registration happens usually after the first purchase to take place after the area in which it is situated became compulsory for registration and that date can vary from area to area between 1899 and 1990, but outside big cities and Home Counties it would generally be 1970-90.

On first registration the solicitors had to produce all the deeds going back normally to a conveyance at least 15 yaers old. That conveyance could well have wording in it that said that the property was conveyed subject to the covenants in a conveyance of ...1909 made between XX and YY. Unless the solicitors produced that conveyance or a certified/examined copy of it at the time then the Land Registry would have inserted the note in question. Because they didn't need to produce it to obtain the basic title - i.e. prove their client's ownership, they often forgot to register the further covenants.

If they happen to have the original or a certified copy of the 1909 conveyance then they can produce it to the registry who will remove the entry and set out the details of the covenants. Often they are about things like not selling alcohol, using the property as a house of ill repute, or digging gravel except for the construction of the house.

As you can see, the longer ago the title was first registered the more likely it is that the original documents have been lost.

To find out what the covenants say you can try getting copies of title of nearby properties because often the old covenants were in a conveyance of a larger area. Sometimes if you can find them there, this in itself is sufficient to avoid having to pay for a policy but some buyer's solicitors say that they cannot be sure that the conveyance referred to on the other title (between the same people on the same date) is the same conveyance - there could have been more than conveyance between the same people that day of different areas of land with different covenants!

If the wording of the covenants is not known then they could contain onerous wording that may have been breached without anyone knowing it. It can be very difficult to enforce old covenants but it is equally difficult to prove that nobody can enforce them.

I think the law should be changed so that covenants over a certain age get removed from the registers unless those entitled to enforce them apply to have them retained. Doing that would get rid of a lot rubbish and simplify solicitors' work.

linlin_3

There was a covenant on a property I purchased many years ago. Paid about £100 for insurance in perpetuity. Problem solved.

The covenant referred to a very small bit of garden (bit enough for a ping pong table) originally belonging to a neighbour and disallowed the construction of a tennis court!