Advice about covenants please ...

[riverrunsthroughit]

Hi

We are considering buying a house which we have been told has a covenant on it meaning we would need to keep the hedges in the garden. The garden is long and narrow and they take up a lot of room (and will be expensive and time consuming to keep properly maintained). We had thought about cutting them down and putting up a regular fence - like a neighbour has.

We are thinking that as all the houses have this covenant (it is a terrace of houses) but one has already broken it - without penalty - we could too... Or are we being niaive?

How do we find out who polices this covenant? No-one seems to know.

Many thanks in advance

Covenants are enforced by someone complaining about a breach.

But you can take out covenant insurance so that if someone did complain, you could pay them off

Covenants are not easily enforceable. I would cut down the hedge and see what happens.

Thanks. I have spoken to a few neighbours and they fell the same way.

How much is insurance CMOTd? Or should I not bother?

feel !!

The insurance is dependent on the price of the house. YOu can call someone like First Title (google them) - let them know your dilemma and then they should be able to give you an almost instant quote. A policy for a house of a value of about £400k should probably run to no more than a few hundred pounds. It runs with the house so if you sell it it can be passed on for the benefit of any future buyer. The key point is to not make any approaches to any one you think might have the benefit of that covenant otherwise it negates you being able to get insurance. For this situation it is unlikely you'll get approached re a breach particularly if the covenant is really old. But at least if for nothing else, you can pass the insurance on when any new buyer makes a fuss about it.
Hope that helps.

It depends on who has the interest of the covenant, whether there is any enforcement etc - be aware there are some people who delight in reporting these things.

Is it a new terrace where the original landowner might still be around ?

The policy isn't hugely expensive - try the Z name company as their cover is pretty good apparently

Thanks all. Will have a look ...

The sellers' solicitors should be able to track back through the various conveyances to find out when the covenant was applied and by whom, and possibly why. If you have that information you might be able to assess what the possibility is of someone objecting if you were to replace the hedge.

Sometimes covenants are applied for aesthetic rather than practical reasons; a local estate was built some fifty years ago and covenants were applied forbidding hedges or fencing of front gardens, which does make the estate look spacious and green. But if it's a back garden, it's a bit strange for anyone to specify only hedges on the boundaries (unless it's to do with wildlife - has the property any connection with a certain HRH?).

No hugglymugly, nothing to do with an HRH. Just a local builder who, I guess, wanted to keep the houses and gardens looking nice. The front is shorter and I wouldn't mind so much keeping those.

I do know that the builder has died but his family still live in the area. Would they be able to object or would it just be the builder who is able to? I can't see why they would want to but ...

I don't know anything about these things!

Yes, they can object too, which is what makes things complex.

DH once dealt with a breach of covenant where the compainee waited till a whole blockk of flats had been built a metre over the covenant height before holding them to ransom (had viewed the planning app etc and deliberatly did it)