Restrictive covenent - should we buy?

[helsbels74]

We are having another attempt at buying a house (having had 2 fall through so far since July - but at least we've sold ours!!!). We're looking for some thoughts from people who might have had similar situations -

• we're buying an empty house, people selling it are children of owner who died over a year ago.
• we thought it would be relatively straight forward but seems the vendor is keeping 1/2 the garden (it would be over 200ft long if we had it all) - this is fine, the garden is big enough
• 4 new homes have been built on land next door and we know there are plans to develop a new home on the land at the bottom of the garden (we knew this when putting the offer in, it's far enough away)
• developer owns the 'ransom strip' between the 4 homes and the bottom 1/2 of the garden.
• we think the vendor wants to sell the bottom 1/2 garden to the developer
• but there is a covenent (?) on the land from the 1950s (and the vendors parents) which restricts development.
• the vendor wants to get this covenent removed and our solicitor has said 'you'd be mad to have it removed' but without really explaining why.
• we can't really see what the problem would be that we aren't already aware of (and potential that the development could be different to that planned)

anyone got any thoughts or similar experience? We really like this house and think this could be overcome....but vendor says it's a dealbreaker and our solicitor isn't being that helpful (we're going back to him to explain more!)

thanks

I guess the risk is that the vendor woudl sell that strip to the developer at the bottom who could then reapply for pp for something rather more extensive and intrusive. Is it the same company involved? Do you know if vendor has been approached previously ?

Talk to your solicitor to see what he thinks the problems are. But that covenant has lots of value - don't just give it away free! It's the difference between the bottom half of the garden being worth nothing and being a hugely valuable building plot. It may be that your solicitor thinks you can negotiate a good deal for it.

depends on whether you are happy with a house one metre away from where your fence would be.

imho you would be mad to agree to this without knowing what could end up there.

I wouldn't buy this house. The vendors are greedy sods. Who knows what else they will want or have done? Strip out the central heating? This behaviour tells you a lot about the sort of people they are. They could ask for more money just on the point of moving. We looked at a house with this issue. The vendor wanted to keep half the garden. Now we know why. We refused and bought another house. That house now has a modern housing estate twenty feet from the back of the house. These new houses are three storey townhouses with rear balconies overhanging the older houses' gardens.

Thank you all for this - it's so irritating to have got so far again (for the 3rd time!) and have this crop up. The draft contract is a laugh with all sorts of attempts to restrict our right to comment on any development in the future.....seems the old lady did a deal with the developer before she died and now the vendor has to get the developer's permission on the contract before they sell it! Very odd.

Anyway, it's all putting me off really so we'll continue to look and stay in the cold, damp rental flat....

Fingers crossed we'll have a new house at some point this year!