Restrictive covenant question

Fang_3

This may be a stupid question but does:

"That every house shall be for the accommodation of one family only"

in a restrictive covenant mean that the rooms in the house can not be let separately?

DVardysShadow

Effectively, yes. It also means that no single person can live there unless they have children AFAICS. Which probably means that it is an unreasonable restriction.

Fang_3

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Effectively, yes. It also means that no single person can live there unless they have children AFAICS. Which probably means that it is an unreasonable restriction.

Thank you! Would that not depend on the definition of a 'family'?

PasturesNew

One single person is a family.
A family is a family.

2-3 random strangers, or 2-3 random mates, are not a family.

delmar39

I'm not fully aware of why you're asking, but restrictive covenants are very difficult to enforce - it'll cost you to do so and as I understand it you'll have to enforce them through the County Court. We had one that stated 'dwelling to be used as residential property only' i.e. no business use and a guitar tutor bought the property 2 doors up from us and immediately started up a business meaning that all the traffic associated with it parked outside our house. Our developer wrote to them and in the end we approached planning at the local authority - in the end he got planning permission (council don't take into consideration restrictive covenants) so we felt shafted. Hence we now live in a new house somewhere else!! So, you could have 5 familes and most likely get away with it.

Fang_3

delmar39 wrote: »

I'm not fully aware of why you're asking, but restrictive covenants are very difficult to enforce - it'll cost you to do so and as I understand it you'll have to enforce them through the County Court. We had one that stated 'dwelling to be used as residential property only' i.e. no business use and a guitar tutor bought the property 2 doors up from us and immediately started up a business meaning that all the traffic associated with it parked outside our house. Our developer wrote to them and in the end we approached planning at the local authority - in the end he got planning permission (council don't take into consideration restrictive covenants) so we felt shafted. Hence we now live in a new house somewhere else!! So, you could have 5 familes and most likely get away with it.

Basically my former landlord is an utter nightmare and has effectively disappeared with my deposit, and so I'm now looking for every angle in which to make him take notice, and the covenant was on the register, and I was wondering if that would be enforceable. Thanks for replying.

PasturesNew

When you say disappeared, what sort of disappeared?

Does he still own the property? Contact the current people to get his address, go round if you have to and warn them he's an idiot.

bryanb

Restrictive covenants can only be enforced by those who have the benefit of them, usually the seller or developer of a property.

Fang_3

PasturesNew wrote: »

When you say disappeared, what sort of disappeared?

Does he still own the property? Contact the current people to get his address, go round if you have to and warn them he's an idiot.

He's vanished. His dad is claiming that he landlord is no longer living at the property that was set out on the tenancy agreement, but hasn't yet given the remaining tenant a forwarding address. The property is actually owned by him, his dad and brother, though we've only ever dealt with the landlord.

I actually lived in the property with the remaining tenants. There were four of us, me, my friend, a girl we didn't know and a very strange man that we didn't know. The man has moved out, I've moved out and the other girl is moving out, and as I went first and still haven't received my deposit, they are worried about getting theirs back, and my friend is worried that the landlord will move anyone in while she's on holiday. She's not able to move until September and will be on her own and is really worried that he's going to get anyone in as he seems to have absolutely no vetting process at all, and I was told tales that you wouldn't believe about the previous people he'd had to live there by the neighbours.

I don't know if it's relevant but he also told us that he bought the property last year and that we were only his second set of tenants, but the register shows that he, his brother and dad bought it in 2006.

delmar39

Fang wrote: »

Basically my former landlord is an utter nightmare and has effectively disappeared with my deposit, and so I'm now looking for every angle in which to make him take notice, and the covenant was on the register, and I was wondering if that would be enforceable. Thanks for replying.

Good luck with that. Let's hope you get it back so that you can put this to bed.

delmar39

bryanb wrote: »

Restrictive covenants can only be enforced by those who have the benefit of them, usually the seller or developer of a property.

Thanks, but as in my situation, our developer wrote one letter to the residential business owner following our complaint, who basically wrote back saying that he intends to continue his business and the developer wrote back to us saying they tried, but there's nothing more they can do - could they have actually took this one stage further and forced him to stop - I'm not so sure. The development had matured by then and building had stopped, so the developer didn't need to bother about potential disruption preventing the sale of their properties. I guess this is one to note - covenants do not always give you the protection intended, as we found out and in the end our only option was to move house. Not good.