Translation of legalese please!

antrobus

lynneinjapan wrote: »

Thanks all. I believe that in fact all three of the flats either are currently rented out or have been in the past, so maybe all the flat owners are in breach of the lease without realising it!

That would not surprise me. Given that the interpretations provided of the clause are correct (which I think they are) it's the kind of restrictive covenant that lessors put into leases to make them more attractive - no subdividing and no subletting without the lessor's permission is the kind of clause which is really for the benefit of the other lessees as a kind of reassurance that their neighbours will always be god-fearing owner occupiers rather than the kind of riff-raff who rent.

It is very likely that no one now really cares one way or another whether or not the flats are rented out, so there's no one left who actually wants to enforce the clause. My understanding is that it's quite common to find restrictive clauses and covenants in property deeds that no one takes a blind bit of notice of, and quite often the advice is aimply to ask those effected whether they have any objection to carrying out the apparently prohibited action.

lynneinjapan

Well, it turns out that when the company was set up, it also became the freeholder, so the three flat owners do actually share the freehold. So any one of them can rent to whomever they like, provided that at least one of the others has given their agreement. The existing flat owners are quite happy with this arrangement and a bit nervous that if the covenant were deleted then the new owner would rent the property out to undesirables, such as ex-drug addicts, because that would command a much higher rent (apparently this guy has a lot of let properties already), so they've told the solicitor that they won't be signing.