You buy a house, you move in and a year later you buy a caravan (don’t laugh it’s actually great for mountain biking / keeping the family happy) then you are ‘reminded’ that you’ve got restrictions on your 1965 agreement which states you can not keep a caravan on your property.

Suddenly you look around the entire village you live in and realise no-one has a caravan – and here’s me thinking they were all just old gits!

Question: How easy (for easy read cheap) is it to get restrictions removed from freehold agreements

(and WTF is ‘freehold’ not so friking FREE?)

Help appreciated
TS

covenants aren’t that unusual, often things like hedge heights, drains,even paint colours, etc.

As for getting out of them? it is a legal contract you entered.

I assume you pay ground rent to the freeholder? Therefore you are the leaseholder….in which case I think you need to purchase the freehold so you can keep your caravan on your drive.

i just found this covenants

Best bet is to speak to someone who deals with land law, brief reading of that suggests that the negatives can’t be passed on, ie you can not be told not to park a caravan. But i could be wrong, i am no lawyer

We don’t pay rent and my understanding is this is a freehold with restrictions. I realise covenants are not that unusual I also realise that coming from Ulster we had a heck of a lot of leasehold which is slowly becoming freehold with the result that restrictions are not so ‘onerous’ Happy to speak to the legal egales and get advice – but has anyone ever had sucess in this area? Cost etc?

SImple. It’s not a caravan, it’s a mobile bike support facility.

Email me tommorow..

And I will help you out when I’m at work..

You need to find the benficiary of the restrictive covenant and seek a release from it. Usually for cash.

Also there may be no power of compunction over the benficiary, i.e. you can’t make them relax the restriction regardless of how much cash you feel minded to throw at the problem.

Also worth checking what the beficiaries remedy is – forfeiture, damages, specific performance? I don’t know – it’ll be in the Deeds and may be registered at Land Registry.

Sounds to me like it may be worth speaking to your conveyancing solicitor in the first instance, getting a contact and seeing what their position is.

Good luck.

tankslapper – who has reminded you of the covenant and are they likely to take it further if you disregard them.

We have covenants on our house relating to running a business from the property but were advised that it would be very difficult for anyone to enforce such a covenant and could be expensive for them to do so.

In short get some proper legal advice from your conveynancer.

Who ‘reminded’ you? Was it a neighbour? If so was it because they objected or because they didnt want you to get into trouble?

Your neighbours may not give a hoot. Personally i would make damned sure my neighbours were ok with it and then i would ignore the covenant.

Bigsi got there first 🙁

On the minor point of why it is “freehold”. It is “free” of any feudal obligations to provide troops, crops or money to the Crown. Since 1066 any land in England which you hold has belonged to the Crown, and could return to Crown ownership were you to die without leaving a will and having no descendants. Since the abolition of feudal landholding by the Statute of Uses (I think) in 1536 freehold is the only primary form of land tenure (leasehold interests are derived from freeholds) and it is not possible to create new feudal interests involving obligations to a feudal landlord.

Restrictive covenants are a bit different though. If all the houses in your village have a “no caravans” covenant then you won’t get the beneficiary of the covenant to waive it I shouldn’t think.

First the wife meets the girlfriend, and now you’re not even allowed to keep your new home at home. Things are going from bad to worse 😉

Anyone else completely in favour of a “no caravans” policy? 🙂

Cheers Zokes – must start a Samaritan’s thread 😆

Bigsi – it was our next door neighbour who is as fed up with nosey buggers as I am. The area I live in is full of old, bet wetting, retired, curtain twitchers who believe having a caravan at front of house lowers the tone – (funny I think mobility wheel chairs are worse!)

That said caravan is now in a barn on a mates farm 5mins walk from home so I’m not so bothered. Just want a piece of paper which says I can do what I like on my own property

TS

In that case may I suggest riding behind the mobility scooter users and using one of these?

It may help to reduce the average age somewhat 😉