Chancel repair liability search-WT?

[wooga]

Aaaaargh!

I got a letter telling me that the buyers now have done a chancel repair liability search and they want us to pay £100 for a policy for them.

I've never heard of this before,apparently it's due to a recent case where someone had to pay for repairs to their local church.We never had any searches like this done for us when we bought the property,I will be asking my neighbours if they know about it!

Should we have to pay for their policy?Is this how it's normally done?I'm worried that they'll start taking the p. about other things if we agree to pay for this.

Is offering half of the amount a better idea?

They say we have a choice of paying nothing,half, or all of it but I get the feeling that we don't really have a choice.

We had to pay for one when we bought our house last year (a lot of church-owned land around here so it's pretty common). I have never heard of the vendor having to pay it, though. What does your solicitor think?

My solicitor's on holiday,I'm trying to get hold of the person standing in for her-I thought it was a cheeky thing to ask,TBH.

But I need sale to go through so I can get on with my life!

We haven't been covered all this time and I bet my neighbours don't have a clue about it,we're not in a little village,there are hundreds of houses around here that could be in the dark about it being a 'liability' area.

We had this and told our buyers to get lost. We're both solicitors and so knew where they were coming from however what they are asking you to do is to pay for an insurance policy to protect against something which might never ever happen. its like them saying please pay for our buildings insurance for the next year in case there is an earthquake and the house suddenly subsides. It hasn't yet and so why should you pay.

The panic is all a bit of a storm in a tea cup. There was a fairly recent case where a household very close to a church had to pay a lot of money for chancel repairs. It ran inot the thousands. However unless you live in a tiny hamlet its likely that any cost which did arise would be spread amongst many homes. Plus its highly unlikely that the church would ever try to enforce the right to claim the money. In our village someone would probably burn the place down if they tried to make everyone pay towards such repairs!!

If your buyers are going to pull out of a purchase over £100 then they are probably not serious about the purchase anyway. Then again do you want to run the risk and lose your sale over £100?

Our buyers caved immediately when we said no. I thnk they knew it was ridiculous.

we had this, exactly as sparklymummy says.

The guy who runs the racket it is making a killing.

It's mostly bollocks unless you live next to a church in a village- there are approx 1500 houses between me and the church they asked us to pay for.

Also you can find out if you are at risk for free by looking at the records held at Kew so ninety plus percent of the country could look at the record physically and see they could never be made liable

That's really interesting and very handy to know,the buyers already have had survey done and we took a low offer price from them-they still had the cheek to ask if they could have my washing machine etc thrown in with that-I'm not moving to a hotel with laundry service!