Restrictive covenants - aaarrrgghhh!!

[KatyMac]

My own fault, I know some housing estates locally have reatrictive covenants

But I asked the estate agent to check with the owners and they told me "no, there were none" not for caravans not for working from home

Got the paperwork through and was signing everything tonight to go back tomorrow and there are covenants

Bugger, no idea if we can buy it now

& if it falls through it'll be our 2nd house to fall through

Estate agent works for the seller. You needed to have checked with your solicitor.

How would they know before the paperwork arrived?

You wouldn’t have a restrictive covenant for working from home in the way it’s usually meant nowadays. Running a business from home, perhaps, if that’s what you mean?

2 of us are freelancers and the 3rd is hybrid working

"No trade or business on the property"

That doesn’t mean you can’t work from home. It means not running a hairdressing salon from your kitchen or a mechanics’ yard or a coal merchants in your back garden. Presumably you don’t have clients or customers visiting whilst you’re freelancing or hybrid working?

In my experience people ignore half of that stuff anyway. I know loads of people
working as hairdressers, nail techs or PTs from home on estates which are likely to have covenants like this.
But working from home isn’t even the same as that. It’s more like don’t open a shop in your living room, the house is for residential
purposes only.

You can sit at a laptop in your house with that kind of restrictive covenant.

ours does not allow a customer based business or any business vehicles parked in view. We also aren’t allowed to build any kind of out building or storage shed.

We have a RC on our property that has already been breached - all we had to do was spend about £30 on an indemnity policy.

Restrictive Covenants preventing trade and business being carried out at a property is essentially to protect the residential character of the area. So if there is increased traffic or footfall from customers or clients visiting the premises, noise from any business activity or any other disruption, that would probably breach the covenant. Clerical, digital, or laptop-based work generally wouldn’t breach a standard residential "no trade or business" property covenant.

Talk to your solicitor

The paperwork says "on the property" and the criteria is a business conducted on the premises such that customers come to buy/consume service or goods are manufactured there. If you are consultants who do your paperwork and planning at home or see the occasional client then that's a very different thing. Even if a client comes once a week for a meeting how is anyone to know they are not friends and family? The secret is to tell your neighbours the minimum about your life and work.

So the "no business from home" would only apply if it was something highly visible like a child minder, a hairdresser or somewhere that customers came to on a daily basis and took up parking. As for keeping a caravan or a trade vehicle on the drive that would be more visible. There are taxi/delivery drivers in my street who keep their vehicle on the driveway and have done so for years.

I run an internet based tutoring business from home. I ran a vintage jewellery business for 10 years from a rented property without my LL ever finding out. I used a virtual office address to get around the lease and hid my stock in the wardrobe if there was an inspection or a tradesperson visit.

I sew, and I have clients in irregularly for fittings/design consultations - but the plan was to covert the garage for my studio

I sell from my caravan at markets and festivals

So seeing the 2 together was a lot on a sunday evening

Some friends moved onto a new estate where the estate builder was still around and they were able to get an exception agreed to the restrictive covenant for the type of business you're describing: the odd client visiting but not a stream of daily visitors, and it being a not very noisy, craft type business. They had to be fussy and jump through hoops. That was from the builders though which is likely to have been easier than buying from an individual. (Because the builders themselves were going to lose the sale if not.)

If your clients are a few a week ( max one a day) I think that’s fine- as someone upthread said, they could just be normal visitors. The caravan is probably going to be an issue unless this covenant is widely ignored across the estate, because most people really don’t want caravans parked on their neighbours’ drives, especially if the houses don’t have high hedges at the front as is typical of a lot of newish estates. Would it be possible to store the caravan offsite and just go to get it when needed?

I remember your other thread- worth checking at this stage on the garage conversion as that’s another really typical restriction although I’m not sure if that’s more likely to be a covenant or a planning restriction- I would check if anyone on the estate has converted and if not I’d be a bit wary, especially if street parking is in short supply.

Don’t forget also that restrictive covenants can only be enforced by the people who put them in place. If the builder has sold all of the properties and moved on (possibly years ago), there’s every chance they won’t care about the restrictive covenants and certainly won’t be interested in taking you to court to enforce them.

Exactly.
New build estates often say no work vans. Well as soon as people move in their work vans will be everywhere. They may just wait until the sales office is gone.

This is what you pay a solicitor to look at.

I think the caravan covenant is more likely to be enforced than the working from home. My ILs live on an estate about 15 years old and my MiL has a hatred of caravans on driveways so would 100% report a neighbour

HI OP

You are correct, for what you do then that is a restriction that you need to take seriously.You can get Restrictive Covenants lifted or revised but it's slow and if part of a dveleopnebt probably quite unfeasible for you at this point.

The agent should have known, it's part of their pre-sale information they should have established.

I honestly think you need to pull out of this one. sorry.

In the future, you can check the Gov Land Registry. It will tell you if a property does have one, and if so you can pay £7 to read it.

www.gov.uk/search-property-information-land-registry

Yes agree....not worth taking the chance on this. Whilst this doesn't help you it will mean the agent and seller don't do it to someone else

How new is the estate? Covenants can be over turned and are often unenforceable unless the build was relatively recent or the builder is still operating on site. That may affect your plans for the garage too. Have any pther properties done similar?

Garages have been converted & actually extra rooms put in the atticnof the garage

And there are a lot of works vans but no caravans

Sorry its early 90s

How old is the house, how old are the covenants, and who has the right to enforce them?

This is important because developers often impose restrictions while they are building and selling houses, to keep the area naice and support sale prices.

Once all the houses are sold they don't give a fig.

Within less than a hundred years the developers will have died and the company no longer exists, so nobody with the power to enforce them remains.

As far as I understand, its down to whoever put the covenant in place to enforce.

When we bought our house last year there was a covenant that said no caravans etc that can be stored on the property. The seller had a caravan on the drive for years and we now have a motorhome on there.

There are several other houses on the road, built at the same time with caravans on the drive. The property (along with the majority on the street) was built in the 50s and the covenant was put in place by a company that no longer exists. Our solicitor said that it was now unenforceable.