Missing pages on Transfer Deed

litibe

Hi,

We're currently in the process of purchasing a house, and our solicitor has informed us that there are a few pages missing from the transfer deed, relating to rights and covenants. At this stage it seems unlikely that the seller will be able to recover these pages.

Our solicitor has advised that we should insist that the seller takes out an indemnity insurance, which is fine. However, we're more concerned that this issue will adversely affect us, both in case a third party attempts to enforce the restrictive covenants or exercises any rights affecting the property, and when it comes to us selling it, this issue will affect the price and scare the buyer away.

With this new knowledge, would you recommend that we should renegotiate the price? Also, does anyone have any other advice about how we should proceed? As a last resort, should we consider pulling out?

Many thanks for your help.

MrJB

Well the insurance policy in theory should protect your position. What restrictive covenants do you feel they may try and enforce that could not be enforced already? Are you planning on carrying out further development on the property?

litibe

MrJB wrote: »

Well the insurance policy in theory should protect your position. What restrictive covenants do you feel they may try and enforce that could not be enforced already? Are you planning on carrying out further development on the property?

We don't know what restrictive covenants there are as they are missing, and the solicitor hasn't shown us the deed yet. It's a relatively new house, under 10 years old. We owned a flat before, so have no knowledge of these covenants. We may like to build a conservatory later.

TrickyTree83

We're currently selling a house where the original deeds from the first purchase in 1935 are missing. We've had to purchase an indemnity to cover the ourselves should anyone come looking for money for a church roof for example from our buyers. It's at the sellers cost so I wouldn't accept any negotiating from the buyer, it's quite typical with older properties though.

davidmcn

litibe wrote: »

we're more concerned that this issue will adversely affect us, both in case a third party attempts to enforce the restrictive covenants or exercises any rights affecting the property, and when it comes to us selling it, this issue will affect the price and scare the buyer away.

With this new knowledge, would you recommend that we should renegotiate the price? Also, does anyone have any other advice about how we should proceed? As a last resort, should we consider pulling out?

What's your solicitor's advice? (given they've seen what's left of the deed, and we haven't - I expect they can make an educated guess about what's not there and how significant it's likely to be)

An indemnity policy might put some buyers off but it shouldn't affect the price, as the point of it is to cover any financial loss if someone tries to enforce the missing provisions in the deed.

SmlSave

An indemnity policy is a good thing to have in this instance.

But ask your solicitor to get the Transfer from both the neighbouring properties, they should be the same but we're working on better safe than sorry here, the extra cost will be around £12-£20 but then you should know what's covered in there