AIBU to ask buyers to pay for Chancel liability insurance?

[Rooferxoxo]

Selling house and buyer's solicitors have said that there may be a liability on thour house for Chancel repair and have asked us to pay £125 to cover cost of indemnity insurance for our buyers. AIBU to think the buyers should pay for Chancel repair insurance themselves as it would be for their benefit?

@User7764217 why should the seller pay?
I struggle to see how this insurance policy is so different to buildings insurance which the buyer undoubtedly pays for. I'm not legally qualified though!

Our solicitor identified this risk & arranged the insurance for us - £25

I didn't think it was even still an issue now, I thought there was a cut-off on it?

Our seller paid. I’m pretty sure they offered to, it wasn’t much at all. They were desperate to sell though.

I had a solicitor ask me to pay a right of way liability insurance once and told them to bugger off. Money making scam in the circumstances and totally unnecessary. I said if the buyer really wanted it they could pay. Never heard anymore about it.

Iirc it's only needed if the church had registered their claim by a particular date. Or something.

Our wee church didn't, so I escaped this. 🎉

So if you check your particular deeds, it may not be necessary.

What I'm getting at is that the buyers may think they need this because they've read that they need this, but the chancel liability may have lapsed for your deeds.

Is it only certain houses or is everyone at risk?

I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer.
The risk is with the new owner, so you could say it’s their problem, they pay. But the seller is selling a risky house, so you could say they pay. I’ve only ever known the buyer to pay it - but if it was a buyer’s market, I can imagine seller doing it as a sweetener. I would lose a buyer over that sum.

The time you have spent asking that on here for the sake of £125 could have been better spent on other things.

Ultimately it’s their risk to not have it. It’s a negotiation point at the minute but they may hold firm and say they will withdraw u less you pay.

Surely you wouldn't pay for somebody else's insurance, do you (unless something like your own grown-up child's car insurance)? What if they ended up having to claim - would they have to track down the details of the people the bought their house from 23 years ago?

Or are they just asking you to reimburse them for the cost of their own policy? That's still weird, though - the potential beneficiary of the insurance (or their close family member) would normally expect to pay for it. It's also very petty in the scheme of things when you look at the amount they're already paying to buy the house plus associated fees and taxes.

I’m a bit confused if you are the sellers don’t you have chancel insurance if your house needs it?
If you do is it ‘in perpuity’ ? If it is you just pass a copy of your document on to your buyers lawyer.
If you are the buyers you need to ask the same question.
We have just exchanged and this came up, I have a copy of chancel insurance from the people we bought from and it’s now been passed on to our buyers, it looks like it originally only cost £35

[quote Rooferxoxo]**@NewKittyMeow
We don't have Chancel repair insurance ourselves. It wasn't identified as an issue 22 years ago when we bought house. We don't have to sell as could rent out property instead.[/quote]
I’d ask them to pay then.

Our solicitors have said the policy itself is £75 and they would charge £50 As an administration fee to "sort it out"

Sounds like a rip-off from sols. Can you get the indemnity yourself?

I paid for it as a buyer 12 years ago. I think there was a choice between a policy applicable to us (the buyers) which was about 50 quid and a policy that was applicable to the property and could be passed on in the case of a future house sale. That was more maybe £100?? Around that time a church had taken action against a homeowner. Of course it’s an outrage it actually exists at all...

Our solicitors have said the policy itself is £75 and they would charge £50 As an administration fee to "sort it out"

Sounds like a rip-off from sols. Can you get the indemnity yourself?

Yup, they're looking to cash in big-time there. Chancers for chancel Aside from their huge fee, as PPs have said (and after a 20-second online search), that premium sounds extremely uncompetitive. I wonder if there's a 'recognised' legacy insurer that they've used by default for decades and never bother to check out the rest of the market - a bit like when charities for the elderly act as brokers/agents for and actively market insurance deals 'specifically tailored to older folks' needs', when there are far cheaper identical policies out there, but without the apparent 'authorised/official' wrapper.

I wonder if it's just the admin fee that they get, or if there's any kind of commission for them built in to the premium for 'recommending' you.

Is it only certain houses or is everyone at risk?

It relates to properties which historically belonged to the lay rector of a parish, who received the benefit of the tithes in return for a commitment to paying the chancel repair costs (that's vastly over simplified, but gives the basics).

So it doesn't apply if you live in an ancient parish (the Victorians built a lot of new churches and subdivided parishes, but this didn't alter existing liabilities) which had a rector as the Anglican incumbent, only those where the clergyman was a vicar, and a lay landowner was the 'lay rector'. These derive from parishes where before the Reformation the church belonged to a monastery; at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, their properties, including rectories, were sold off or given to the wealthy.

Over time, these landowners' estates got subdivided and houses sold off, but if the chancel liability was not specifically omitted, a share of it went to the later owners. It's a bit like if a property was charged with an annual rent for the benefit of a charity; when it was sold that liability went along with it, and presumably the purchase price would have been reduced to reflect that.

@Ellmau

Is it only certain houses or is everyone at risk?

It relates to properties which historically belonged to the lay rector of a parish, who received the benefit of the tithes in return for a commitment to paying the chancel repair costs (that's vastly over simplified, but gives the basics).

So it doesn't apply if you live in an ancient parish (the Victorians built a lot of new churches and subdivided parishes, but this didn't alter existing liabilities) which had a rector as the Anglican incumbent, only those where the clergyman was a vicar, and a lay landowner was the 'lay rector'. These derive from parishes where before the Reformation the church belonged to a monastery; at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, their properties, including rectories, were sold off or given to the wealthy.

Over time, these landowners' estates got subdivided and houses sold off, but if the chancel liability was not specifically omitted, a share of it went to the later owners. It's a bit like if a property was charged with an annual rent for the benefit of a charity; when it was sold that liability went along with it, and presumably the purchase price would have been reduced to reflect that.

Thank you for providing this information. That is very interesting.

We paid when we bought the house and then paid when we sold to keep the process going! It was very annoying but a relatively small amount in the scheme of things and not worth quibbling over.

I paid when I bought house by a graveyard...

@carltongirl

I paid when I bought house by a graveyard...

Sounds like you did the right thing

It's insurance for the benefit of the new owners so they should be paying, you're not possibly going to get someone else's repair bills as you're not going to be the owners anymore, they are!

You could pay for the insurance but up the price for your house to more than cover the costs.

We paid it when we bought our flat. It was less than £15 and we had the option not to but didn't want to risk it for such a low cost. Just before we moved out there was some extensive damage to the church roof in a storm but I'm unsure if that would have affected it at all. We certainly didn't hear anything more after we paid the £15!

It wasn't a "thing" when you bought OP. It used to be viewed as something to ignore until some poor bastards had a claim made against their property and had to pay it.