Restritive Convenants Advice Please!

katrinar50

I have had a letter from my solicitor and I quote...

"There are various conveyances dated 1921, 1952 and 1967 which were not produced to the Land Registry at the time of registration for that land. The buyer's solicitor has pointed out that there could be restritive convenants affecting the property which have not been noted."

In order to recitify the situation my solicitor is saying we need to do further investigation with the LR which could be costly and lengthy or we should buy a restrictive convenant indemnity policy instead.

I have read (on this board) that restrictive convenants are worthless and not worth enforcing so I am not sure why we should buy this policy? The convenants, if there are any, are likely to be developers covenants and also so old that the developers that made them are not likely to be around now either!

I feel it is a rip off by the solicitor and to concur this it is bizarre to find out that the same solicitor is trying to instruct the sellers of the property we are buying to also buy a similar restrictive convenant indemnity policy because they did building work 17 years ago and that did not get approval from the developers who had made convenants on their property.

Ideas!! Thoughts!! Advice please!!

sassybooboos

how would you feel if you bought a house and later found out there was a covenent saying you couldn't build or chancel convenant or something similar and didnt have insurance policy to cover it.

indemnity policies are being bought for loads of house sales. i nearly had to buy one for changing 2 windows when i recently sold my house but the buyers didn't insist so i didn't have to. ( sometimes they are used for when building regs haven't been applied for)

They cost about £120.

I do think most covenants dont stand on a lot of properties, my old property had some but they related to the builders who had gone bankrupt so were void.

Bungarm2001

Like the poster above...we had restrictive covenants on our house but after a bit of research (which we did ourselves...we asked the neighbours!) we found out they were unenforcable as they were builders convenants and not applicable anymore.

Our convenants were about changing the colour of the front door and garage doors etc etc They all had to be the same as the neighbours (we live on a poncy estate) but as I said, after a quick recce we discovered no-one took them seriously as the builders were long gone out of business.

Some convenants are trivial like that, but beware. I have seen others on other properties that are a lot more serious.

Can you find out exactly what these are? It could help a lot.

tbs624

Pay for the policy - your lender will probably insist on the indemnity ins. being in place anyway, and the costs will be cheaper than for you r solicitors time in trying to find out full details of the covenants..

Sammy85_2

Ask the sellers to take out the indemnity policy before you purchase the property.

When we bought our house we found that the garage had no planning permission, they had simply extended the outhouse (outside toilet many years ago!) several times until it was garage sized then stuck a garage door on it.
The sellers took out a policy that pays out the value of the entire property should we be forced to demolish the garage, which is highly unlikely due to it being there so long. Never the less, this policy gave us piece of mind and we went ahead with the purchase!

If your sellers want the purchase to go through, which at this stage i would assume so since they will already be paying solicitors etc. then they will probably pay for the policy.

Its worth asking, worst case they say no and you buy it, but its not too expensive.


You could always be a meany and gazunder them.... haha :rolleyes:

Richard_Webster

The sellers' solicitor should be asked to provide a missing details indemnity policy. OK the covenants might have much to do with anything but not knowing what is in them means that you can't tell if there has been a breach. OP's lender will want to the issue covered. When OP sells the same point will come up.

Seller's solcitors might be able to find the covenants by looking at the registered titles of nearby properties but this is a bit chancy because it costs £3 a go to look at each title unless you can find a helpful person at LR enquiries who can look for you for free. If the details of the covenants of those particualr conveyances are set out on another nearby title and they have nothing to do with not building extensions or other aspects of residential use then OP's solicitors might accept that without a policy.

katrinar50

Richard Webster - Thanks for your advice. I have come up lucky as the solicitor is paying for the policy as they acted in our original purchase of the property and this should have been addressed then.

If not I would have suggested that the solicitor got the LR details for the adjoining property as it is likely they would the same restrictions.

dubsey

We viewed a house that seemed a bargain considering the enormous size of the plot it was on. That, it turned out had restrictive covenant stating that if ever the house was extended or if the plot was sold and another house was built on it he would always be entitled to half of any profit/increase in property value. We met the vendor and he told us he'd done it to stop greedy developers building on what had been a family home for over 40 years and he wanted kept as such. He refused to lift it, so we walked away because it was far to complicated for us.

It might be worth checking with land registry just to ensure it isn't something like that?