Chancel Indemnity

gauly

Raggie wrote: »

Gauly,
a £100,000 claim by the church would mean the eastate is liable for £850 of that and each house £8.50 of that charge.

... except that it's structured so that each house is jointly and severally liable. That means the easiest thing for the church to do is to pick one household - preferably one who appear to have plenty of money - and get the whole £100k of them. That would then leave that household chasing everyone on the estate for their £8.50 contribution. It is obviously uneconomic for the church to ask for £8.50 from each house so I doubt they would go down that route.

DVardysShadow

gauly wrote: »

Sorry, I don't really understand this? The point I was making was that the insurance doesn't make the problem go away entirely. If you just get the basic insurance without doing the full check then you are covered for chancel liability - obviously - that is the point of the insurance. But it doesn't pay you for the huge devaluation of your house! Or am I missing something?

Just that I don't think it is the brightest thing - in fact I think it would be the dumbest thing to go to the parish and say "you know this pile of money ... will you promise to leave it alone?". If you have nothing to do in your spare time, please poke wasps nest with sharp sticks. It has less implications for the rest of us.

DVardysShadow

gauly wrote: »

... except that it's structured so that each house is jointly and severally liable. That means the easiest thing for the church to do is to pick one household - preferably one who appear to have plenty of money - and get the whole £100k of them. That would then leave that household chasing everyone on the estate for their £8.50 contribution. It is obviously uneconomic for the church to ask for £8.50 from each house so I doubt they would go down that route.

Is it fully Joint and Several, or only Joint and Several across the heirs, successors and assigns of each original parcel of land which carried the liability? Or is it different in each parish? Or is it best left alone until 2013?

gauly

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Just that I don't think it is the brightest thing - in fact I think it would be the dumbest thing to go to the parish and say "you know this pile of money ... will you promise to leave it alone?". If you have nothing to do in your spare time, please poke wasps nest with sharp sticks. It has less implications for the rest of us.

I was obviously talking about for a house you don't own - not if you are thinking about getting insurance for a house you already own! Though I do think the church is perfectly capable of checking these records itself and registering chancel liability if it chooses to do so - I don't think a reminder from a member of the public will make any difference.

You are bringing up another problem I have with this whole thing - just how !!!!ed off are the sellers of the house going to be if you find out for certain they have a liability? On the other hand, it would be a disaster to buy a house that gets a liability registered against it in 2013 - wouldn't it? Even with the insurance. Or does the insurance cover the loss of value of the house? I know I won't ever be buying a house with a liability registered against it after 2013 and I'm sure lots of other people feel the same way.

I would certainly risk !!!!ing off the vendors by doing a full check. There is no way I want to buy a house with chancel repair liability - with or without insurance.

gauly

When I was investigating this when looking to buy our current house I found several people on the internet who had simply written to the parish council and asked if they intended to register for chancel repair by 2013 and where the parish wrote back and said no - so sometimes they are able to refuse a large "pile of money".

DVardysShadow

gauly wrote: »

I was obviously talking about for a house you don't own - not if you are thinking about getting insurance for a house you already own! Though I do think the church is perfectly capable of checking these records itself and registering chancel liability if it chooses to do so - I don't think a reminder from a member of the public will make any difference.

You are bringing up another problem I have with this whole thing - just how !!!!ed off are the sellers of the house going to be if you find out for certain they have a liability? On the other hand, it would be a disaster to buy a house that gets a liability registered against it in 2013 - wouldn't it? Even with the insurance. Or does the insurance cover the loss of value of the house? I know I won't ever be buying a house with a liability registered against it after 2013 and I'm sure lots of other people feel the same way.

I would certainly risk !!!!ing off the vendors by doing a full check. There is no way I want to buy a house with chancel repair liability - with or without insurance.

If it is not your property and the vendors offer Indemnity Insurance at their expense, then I don't see any reason to go prodding around. And if you do, you should have the decency not to communicate your findings to the vendors.

gauly

DVardysShadow wrote: »

If it is not your property and the vendors offer Indemnity Insurance at their expense, then I don't see any reason to go prodding around. And if you do, you should have the decency not to communicate your findings to the vendors.

So, you would buy a house that could loose half it's value in 2013 just because the vendors offered you £100 worth of insurance??

DVardysShadow

gauly wrote: »

So, you would buy a house that could loose half it's value in 2013 just because the vendors offered you £100 worth of insurance??

On what basis do you draw that conclusion?

gauly

DVardysShadow wrote: »

On what basis do you draw that conclusion?

Because the insurance covers chancel liability for yourself but not any loss of value on your house when you sell. A house with chancel liability will lose value - the Wallbank's house that started all this is completely unsellable for example.

DVardysShadow

gauly wrote: »

Because the insurance covers chancel liability for yourself but not any loss of value on your house when you sell. A house with chancel liability will lose value - the Wallbank's house that started all this is completely unsellable for example.

That wouldn't make me buy a house.