Chancel Repair Liability

dkmax_2

whois wrote: »

As I understand full search is the most accurate and comprehesive available method of finding out if any property has chancel liablity.

Perhaps you would like to provide an example of the service you have in mind so that its cost / T&Cs can be examined?

It is not a good idea to go cheap and save few tenners by ignoring an important search while buying in hundreds of thoussands.

This is not going cheap. This is taking out insurance to mitigate a potential risk. In attempting to assess if the risk exists with a higher degree of precision, you are potentially increasing your liability and definitely spending more money.

* Basic check £16, If yes, then insurance for £50-£70
* "Full" check, £120, If yes, then insurance for £500+,
If still uncertain then insurance for £50-70.

After 13th Oct 2013, the situation will have certainty for the new buyer. Note that registration of chancel liability can take place at any time after that date but it only would affect any subsequent buyers (or owners prior to that date).

Richard_Webster

One useful link to findout Parish boundry of related church of your postcode. You can get some information.

achurchnearyouDOTcom/parishmapDOTphp

Replace DOT by .

It also provided details of church like when if was built etc.

I have found that the church relevant to my property was built in 1950s.

A good free starting point for your search.

This gives modern parish boundaries, which are NOT the ones that have anything to do with Chancel Liability. It really is an old chestnut - this "the Church down the road is modern...." argument. It has nothing whatever to do with anything. The question is whether the medieval boundaries put the land within a parish where there is land not owned by the Church which has this liability.

gauly

dkmax wrote: »

This is not going cheap. This is taking out insurance to mitigate a potential risk. In attempting to assess if the risk exists with a higher degree of precision, you are potentially increasing your liability and definitely spending more money.

* Basic check £16, If yes, then insurance for £50-£70
* "Full" check, £120, If yes, then insurance for £500+,
If still uncertain then insurance for £50-70.

After 13th Oct 2013, the situation will have certainty for the new buyer. Note that registration of chancel liability can take place at any time after that date but it only would affect any subsequent buyers (or owners prior to that date).

Well, I was considering getting a full search done too (luckily the basic check came back "no liability"). If the answer was "yes" then the response would not be "insurance for £500+" but buy a different house! It's really horrible to the sellers but then you could argue they should have chancel repair liability insurance in place already. I guess you should offer them the option of purchasing it before you do the full search. Plus, I'm not willing to potentially lose thousands of pounds for some people I don't even know.

I know there is insurance which covers the liability in perpetuity but like whois I would be dubious about the value of such insurance. What if the company goes bust? It may well do if the church does register hundreds of thousands of properties in 2013.

There is also the problem that you are not allowed to reveal the existance of the policy to the church (for obvious reasons since they would claim from you rather than anyone else!) But I think having a chancel repair liability on your property would devalue it significantly. How are you going to advertise to potential buyers the reason why your property is worth thousands of pounds more than the identical one next door?

And in a whole street devalued by having chancel repair liability - are you really going to get full value for your house? Not likely.

gingertips

just reading up on this....I cannot believe how stupid the Labour government were at the time - why oh why did they bring about all this uncertainty?!!! Still 2 years for churches to register interest - whats to stop them registering their interest in EVERY property in their parish, thereby completely throwing out the changes the government put in place in 2003, by making people potentially liable in the future...

Perhaps Ive misread this, but it all seems completely bonkers to me!

Richard_Webster

In the vast majority of cases the Church will not have bothered to register liability and when a property without a registered liability is sold after 13 October 2013 the buyers are completely free of liability. Therefore from that date the insurers will only continue to be concerned about the unsold properties and those few where liability has been registered after insurance, but before 13 October 2013.

If the Church wants to pursue property owners where there is no registered liability after 13 October 2013 they will have to work out which properties have changed hands since that date and which haven't - so they will have that extra burden and will have to pay someone to do that.