Chancel Liability - 2013

PHTC

Hi All, sorry for another Chancel Liability thread but I am currently in the process of buying a house and the searches have come back stating that the house may be affected, as a result our solicitor has recommended one of 3 insurances.

1. 25 Year insurance which is not portable between owners £58
2. 25 that is portable £120ish
3. 35 that is portable £160ish

The value of the property is £102,000 and they want to charge us £48 on top of that for setting up the policy for us. Am I being ripped off here?

Also if I did take the 25 non transferable insurance and come to sell the house in 7 years and the land is registered with the church by 2013 will that mean that the new owners wouldnt be able to get insurance whereas the 25 year portable they would (but only for a further 18 years?)

It just all seems ridiculous to me, the house is meant to be freehold...

Anyway any advice people? Just want to protect my investment should however unlikely the house turn out to be in an area affected.

Davesnave

I thought the seller paid for Chancel Repair Indemnity, at least I did last year. In the general scheme of things, it was just a minor expense, so went through 'on the nod.'

To tell you the truth, I was so happy to be rid of the property I didn't consider for a moment that the purchaser might pay!

firsttimebuyer_99

Hi there, I'm in a similar position and our Chancel report came back with an issue - as above, my solicitor has requested that the seller pays the cost of the insurance. No response as yet (letter only went a couple of days ago!) but from the letter, it sounded like pretty standard practise to ask the seller to pay. I think my solicitor quoted about £150-160 for this.

Richard_Webster

Normally when there is any adverse matter the seller is expected to pay, but in this case sellers have often been able to get away with not paying.

What happens is something like this:

Buyer's solcitor asks for the cost of the policy. Seller's solicitor has a choice of either spending ages explaining to his seller client why in theory he should pay ( the whole business is so tedious and the explanations complicated) or he simply asks client with little or no explanation. Seller client often doesn't see why he should pay and says "no." Buyer' solicitor then can either go back and argue the point, with some justification, but may well not get a change in response, and just wastes a a week or two over the point, or tells his client to pay up if he wants to move quickly. So unfortunately a lot of buyers do get stuck with it.

Your solicitors can get a perpetual policy for £110 to cover £200,000 from Legal & Contingency Limited, which is good value considering the figures you have been quoted, but strangely many solicitors are quite backward in researching the legal indemnities market and stick with one company regardless!

maninthestreet

Why should the seller pay for the insurance, if it's the buyer who benefits from it? The seller has no interest in insuring his property against Chancel Repair liability, as the seller will no longer own it when the sale completes.
£48 represents just 0.047% of the £102,000 purchase price.

PHTC

Thanks for the reply guys, The searches raised the potential liability about a week ago, our solicitor then requested that the sellers pay the fee (we are buying the house from a building firm, they acquired it through part ex on a new build). The sellers refused to pay it which is the letter I received yesterday requesting I paid and hence I thought i'd come on here to ask peoples opinions on it as I find it confusing. I'm going to contact my solicitor at lunch today to try and get more information but any info I can get from here would be really helpful and very much appreciated.

PHTC

If I need to I will pay the fee but would obviously want to minimise it as much as possible, so back to my initial question, in terms of the changes to the law in 2013 with/without the multiple forms of insurance what potential position could I and infact any buyers in the same position be in. Thanks for the help again guys.

KiwiB

Morning,

I am quite interested in this thread.. we bought our place last year and bought a non-portable policy, our thinking being that we paid for our own policy, so when we sell the new buyer can pay for theirs. Hopefully this doesn't come back and bite us in the bum in a few years time!

KiwiB

Morning,

I am quite interested in this thread.. we bought our place last year and bought a non-portable policy, our thinking being that we paid for our own policy, so when we sell the new buyer can pay for theirs. Hopefully this doesn't come back and bite us in the bum in a few years time!

MissMoneypenny

maninthestreet wrote: »

Why should the seller pay for the insurance, if it's the buyer who benefits from it? The seller has no interest in insuring his property against Chancel Repair liability, as the seller will no longer own it when the sale completes.
£48 represents just 0.047% of the £102,000 purchase price.

I think the seller benefits from it too ie, their house might be worthless without it.

AMILLIONDOLLARS

In this market the sellers are stupid not to pay, is there a rush for this property? you should go back and throw some doubts on whether you wish to purchase under these circumstances, after all there are developers and can easily stand this cost whereas you are a FTB on a limited budget, that would be my stragegy
AMD