Indemnity Insurance Solicitor HELP!!

Huddersmad

Hi, I am currently in process of selling my house. We bought 3 years ago and have made no changes to the house.

However, the purchaser' solicitor has requested we take indemnity insurance against the garage as there is no planning permission in place and no Covenant consent for the garage.

The covenant is from when the house was built in 1910 and the garage has been up since 1994. We have been told it will cost between £150 and £200 for this insurance.

However i dont feel we should be paying it as we only bought 3 years ago and our solicitor said it was ok as the garage was there before the people we bought off?(have letter stating this)

If anyone can shine any light on the situation and some advice on where we stand would be fantastic!?

Cheers

silvercar

Your right, there is no way that anyone can ask you to knock down a garage built in 1994.

In practice, you have a buyer, the market is difficult, for the sake of £200 to keep your buyer, its money well spent.

chappers

If there is a restrictive covenant stating that a garage can't be built on the property then in theory this could be enforced by an interested party, however as the covenant was originated in 1910 it is highley unlikely that any enforcement will be made.
As Silvercar says £200 is a small price to pay to keep your buyer.

frank.hopper

However i dont feel we should be paying it as we only bought 3 years ago and our solicitor said it was ok as the garage was there before the people we bought off?(have letter stating this)

Yeah I agree,and take your point! are you using the same solicitor? sometimes different solicitors are more thorough than others, and some are required to 'jump through more hoops', depending on the demand of the buyers solicitors, could be a condition of sale.

ASK, don't rock the boat too much.

Richard_Webster

There is the point about not rocking the boat which is fair enough.

If you can show that the garage is more than 20 years old then under common law it is too late for anyone to take enforcement action so I would try to get evidence of that. A neighbour who lived nearby for a long time may be able to make a statutory declaration as to when the garage was built and that may be enough - but your solcitor may charge you something for drawing up the declaration so the savings may not be great. Sometimes the footprint of the garage on a say 1975 OS extract may be enough to show its age - have a look and see what evidence you can collect.

chappers

Richard are you saying that after 20 years an interested party could not even enforce a restrictive covenant.
If so I take it you mean that no enforcement can be made after 20 years have elapsed from the date of the contravention of the covenant. Rather than the covenant being un enforceable 20 years after being made.

Just interested as I am probably about to contravene an old restrictive covenant.

Richard_Webster

My understanding of the law is that if the contravention e.g. building an extension, is 20 years old, the courts will not be prepared to give the enforcer a remedy - but see my disclaimer below!

chappers

That would make sense, I don't think it is going to be a problem as the covenant is now over 100 years old and although there is no policy in place the council, who we bought the property from, did agree to take on the indemnity for the wall we are about to demolish and we do have it in writing between our solicitors and theirs.