Historic Rent charge

canaldumidi

£2 12 0d in old money is £2.60p. Backdated 6 years that is £15.60.

Indemity insurance will cost you, say, 5 times that.

Why not reduce the property sale price by £15.60?

(or offer them a really nice bottle of wine......)

RoseBerni

canaldumidi said:

£2 12 0d in old money is £2.60p. Backdated 6 years that is £15.60.

Indemity insurance will cost you, say, 5 times that.

Why not reduce the property sale price by £15.60?

(or offer them a really nice bottle of wine......)

Ha ha I was thinking I might have to pay it from when my parents bought the property in 1975 
a bottle of wine might work 
thank you 

princeofpounds

Offering to reduce the price will probably not work. It is not just a normal monetary civil debt.

That is thanks to Section 121 of the Law of Property Act 1925 and the precedent established in Roberts v Lawton 2016 (the 'Morgoed case').

If the rent is not paid, the rentcharge owner may in theory re-enter the property and establish a lease over that property in order to recoup their losses. Yes, that sounds draconian, and that's exactly how the court described it in the summary. No-one thought for almost a century that this would be a practical problem until Morgoed Estates Ltd. bought up a whole load of rentcharges and started to do just that, the moral people that they are.

But all is not lost. You can almost certainly buy indemnity insurance which the lenders are very likely to accept, as mentioned above. Hopefully the buyers will too if they have not been spooked. Whilst the theoretical legal risk is large, the practical risk is minimal and this would cover the significant financial costs if the worst happened.

Alternatively, a more permanent solution would be to redeem the rentcharge.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rentcharges

This usually costs about 16x the annual rent. You appear to have a defined rent amount, a name and an address for the owner (even if defunct) so this procedure may well be open to you. The main problem beyond having enough details to fulfil the procedure is that it takes time, because it's the government.

Whilst this procedure sorted the problem for most people, unfortunately five years later the government has still not addressed protections for all forms of rentcharge. But that's a whole other topic.

RoseBerni

 Thank you
The buyers probably wouldn’t be able to buy a property in the area as they all have these rent charges most of them have never been paid . 
I spoke to the LR and they said they wouldn’t be able to remove the charge as the person is dead / address no longer exists 
The buyers solicitors mentioned they want a deed of variation 
however I’m pretty sure this can’t happen as there is no one to ask 
hopefully an indemnity policy would be ok 
    I read about Mooregate the good  thing is that they wouldn’t be able to buy up my rent charge sneakily as I have the only piece of paper with the late rent charge and it’s been in the banks vaults for almost 50 years and my parents never saw this paper or paid the rent charge