Restrictive covenants on the BBC

eddddy

The BBC article seems to talk about 'Restrictive Covenants' when they mean all 'Covenants'.

There are 'Positive Covenants' and 'Negative (Restrictive) Covenants'.

• The requirement to pay maintenance fees will be a 'Positive Covenant'. (i.e. Something you must do.)

• The restriction on satellite dishes will be a Negative / Restrictive Covenant (i.e. Something you must not do.)

I guess the challenge is that home owners want the benefits that the covenants bring...

For example...

• They want the grass verges cut, children's play area maintained, the parking areas resurfaced when required, etc

• And they don't want neighbours dismantling cars on their driveways, parking HGVs in the road, etc

... but they want the terms to be reasonable, and they don't want to have to sign a blank cheque to achieve it.

Cakeguts

The quality of the research of BBC journalists at the moment is about the standard of an 8 year old primary school child who is only really interested in drawing. They get things completely wrong all the time because they don't look deeper than first sight.



Not only that but the other day I was really annoyed about the reporting on the stupid, self centred, narcissistic, ego tripping people who have been blocking roads in central London because it came higher up in the reports on the website than the latest knife crime victims. What organisation puts idiots who block roads in the wrong place higher than the families of people who have lost loved ones to knife crime?



I have now got to the point where I take anything reported by the BBC with a pinch of salt. There is no longer any way of telling how much of the reports are true and how much has been written by someone who hasn't done any research or has been written to create a sensation.



Those idiots who get arrested for blocking roads in the wrong places are wasting their time and everyone else's. The place to block a road is outside a large primary school in the morning before school and in the evening when parents drive in and try to park right outside the school to pick up their children.

NeilCr

Enterprise_1701C wrote: »

I haven't read it, neither do I intend to.

Just wanted to say that putting a satellite dish on the front or the back is not a choice, it has to be in line of sight to the satellite so, depending on the direction the house faces, that could be a VERY restrictive covenant to someone that is, for whatever reason, desperate to have a satellite dish.

I've got my dish on a pole on the back of the house. I didn't have to but it's out of sight there and a neighbour at the time was pretty anal about anything like that so I went for avoiding conflict.

It works fine

robatwork

Enterprise_1701C wrote: »

Just wanted to say that putting a satellite dish on the front or the back is not a choice, it has to be in line of sight to the satellite so, depending on the direction the house faces, that could be a VERY restrictive covenant to someone that is, for whatever reason, desperate to have a satellite dish.

Apart from the pole idea, you can pick up the original Star Trek series on the horror channel on Freeview. Be warned, there's a lot of make up on show.

kerri_gt

Enterprise_1701C wrote: »

I haven't read it, neither do I intend to.

Just wanted to say that putting a satellite dish on the front or the back is not a choice, it has to be in line of sight to the satellite so, depending on the direction the house faces, that could be a VERY restrictive covenant to someone that is, for whatever reason, desperate to have a satellite dish.

Not really' our road does not allow them according to covenants from the 1980s. Being reasonable with the advance of tech, the management company does allow them but requests they are placed as out of sight as possible. Being a cul de sac, the houses on the road face all directions and no one has needed one on the front of their house except one person, who has it at ground level, everyone else has them at the back, side or on garages set back from the houses.

Keep_pedalling

robatwork wrote: »

The other thread on covenants prompted me about a recent BBC Moneybox show I heard. The whole story was a shocking revelation about how this poor lady's house isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Only it seemed to be a non-story to me. I found the associated article:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49935283

The journalist failed to list these "unreasonable" restrictive covenants. I do recall one being the reasonable one of no satellite dishes being allowed on the front of the houses. But they were allowed on the back.

The article is deliberately conflating her understandable concern about the management charges with the covenants. Shonky journalism.

You complain about sloppy journalism but what you have written is just as sloppy. It does not say the house is worthless, the quote from the owner is that her freehold is not worth the paper is written on. In other words she considers it as freehold in name only and not much better than a leasehold.

AnotherJoe

robatwork wrote: »

The other thread on covenants prompted me about a recent BBC Moneybox show I heard. The whole story was a shocking revelation about how this poor lady's house isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Only it seemed to be a non-story to me. I found the associated article:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49935283

The journalist failed to list these "unreasonable" restrictive covenants. I do recall one being the reasonable one of no satellite dishes being allowed on the front of the houses. But they were allowed on the back.

The article is deliberately conflating her understandable concern about the management charges with the covenants. Shonky journalism.

Pot.Kettle.Black.
World of difference between houses freehold not being worth the paper it's written on and the house.
Shonky post deliberately conflating freehold value with value of house
P.s I see KP also made the same point ahead of me.

newsgroup_monkey

Out of interest, what are the weirdest covenants anyone has come across?


Only one we had on our old house was a tree preservation order on some Leylandii. We lived in a 3 storey house. When the Leylandii became so tall that they stopped the sky dish on the roof, on a pole, working, we had 6 foot chopped off the top (we didn't know about the order).


Neighbours behind us complained to the council and insisted we were taken to court and fined. Council told us to apply for permission the next time, which we did and took around 20 foot off.


The houses were build in the 1960s and the order was put there to ensure privacy for the houses behind that had been built a few years previously. Apparently one of the original owners still lived in the house. The rest of the street didn't care and had no idea.