"Claw back provision" applied to large garden/land - what does this mean for buyers?

paddy's_mum

Tell the vendors to fence off the garden and sell it separately. It's (currently) not a building plot so may fetch a few hundred quid.

On the other hand, it devalues the house they are selling as the garden is substantially reduced which may mean that you would not want to purchase the property if it was not big enough for you to do those things you aspire to.

It seems to me that they want their cake and eat it. Someone round here sold a house at market value and had a 50 year, 50% claw back on it. Needless to say, the family business was property development!

G_M

If you don't intend to do anything to activate the clause (eg sell off/build on the garden), the only impact would be that if you were to sell the poperty (within the time limit of the clause) you would not be able to demnd a price that reflected the development possibilities.

Since your buyer would be subject to the same clause.

xylophone

http://cooper-adams.com/selling-or-buying-with-an-overage-provision-on-land/
may be of interest.

PrincessJR

Thank you all for your thoughts.

The garden was one of the main selling points of the house for us. At 260ft and beautifully landscaped its by far the best we could have hoped for, and so selling off a chunk to developers would never be something we'd want.

Likewise, I'd be reluctant to give the seller the option of dividing the garden and selling some off it separately. The estate agent is going to speak to the vendors about the clause and possibly if we can get the term reduced from 15 years to 5 years it wont have any impact on our future resale as we intend to be there at least 10 years.

They are very keen to sell and so hopefully they won't lose out on a sale for the sake of a 'greedy' clause.

Hoploz

Has it been imposed by the people currently selling? Or is it an old covenant?

If its the current owner then I would threaten to pull out unless they remove the restriction. Greedy !!!!!!s.

getmore4less

Sometimes the clauses are flawed enough to get round.

one reported was based on the uplift when there is planning, so the people got planning for a big fence this triggered the clause, the fence added no value to the land clause defunct.

Have a good read, it will be almost impossible to cover all scenario and most vendors/will accept what has been written for them without understanding the flaws thinking it will work.

getmore4less

PrincessJR wrote: »

"The garden could, subject to planning consent, accommodate an additional dwelling. However there is to be a covenant prohibiting the development of a dwelling house on the garden land subject to a claw back provision".

That would have to be written very carefully.

does it specify the area what if it is split differently

what if it was developed for something else first.

how many times can it be triggered.
can you extend into the space

what if it is more than one, or both demolished and a block.

could you extend the existing property into the space (same dwelling and then sell off a different bit

etc.

It was(is)not uncommon in areas where they were plottted up for building for people to buy two/three to stop houses being built around them.

not sure how common these days as most builds tens to be developers rather than a row of plots sold off for building.