On 31/03/2021 23:20, Mike Humphrey wrote:
On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 18:38:16 +0100, Steve Walker wrote:
Not necessarily unenforceable either.

My house has a requirement in the deeds to maintain a fence, hedge or
wall on the boundaries - and as it is leasehold (only £6 every six
months and no other conditions other than maintaining a property of a
rental value of a few tens of pounds per year on the land), not even a
requirement to ask when making changes, it does mean that the leasing
company might well be interested, to stop their land being taken by
someone else.

Leaseholds are a different matter - lease conditions are enforceable as
(in theory) the freeholder can terminate your lease if you don't comply.
In practice it's unlikely to come to that, but the threat of losing your
house and all the money you paid for it is quite an incentive. Doubly so
if you have a mortgage, as the lender won't allow you to lose their
security like that and will intervene to either force you to sort it our
or repossess the house so they can do it themselves.

Covenants on freehold land are not so straightforward. I said
"challenging" not "impossible" to enforce - it would need a court case,
and there's a lot of non-obvious catches that can mean the case fails if
you don't have everything perfect. It's a good idea to comply with
covenants in case someone tries enforcing them on you, but I wouldn't
*rely* on being able to enforce them against someone else. But I'm an
amateur, if it matters consult a lawyer (and be prepared to spend a lot).

Covenants can prevent rather than require the owner doing something.
Which is why flats are (almost always) leasehold, it is the only way to
bind everybody to maintain common parts etc




Mike



--
djc

(–€Ì¿Ä¹Ì¯–€Ì¿ Ì¿)
No low-hanging fruit, just a lot of small berries up a tall tree.