"Al Reynolds" wrote in message
...

"Cicero" wrote:
My solicitor was not very helpful and only acted under pressure from
myself.
He had either missed the covenant at the time of purchase or hadn't
considered it worth his time to explain it to me. Although my experience
may
be rare I think it is worth asking both solicitor and surveyor about
such
things. If it doesn't concern the surveyor he will surely not be upset
about
being asked and may actually know about such things despite being
outside
his terms of reference.

Certainly the surveyor may know some detail of "standard" local covenants,
where properties are part of old estates, but I wouldn't expect them to
know
much about covenants etc. over an individual property.

In your case, I take it that your conveyancing solicitor paid for all the
costs
involved in the subsequent legal work? It doesn't matter whether he
"missed
the covenant at the time of purchase or hadn't considered it worth his
time
to
explain it to (you)" because his actions resulted in a material loss on
your
part.
If he didn't pay for the costs then you should certainly pursue him for
them
(unless it was too long ago or you don't want the stress).

Unusually for this group, I don't have anything against solicitors (I am
related
to one), but bad solicitors like this give good solicitors a bad name.

Al

=========================
My solicitor charged me a nominal fee (£100-00 + VAT) for the necessary
remedial legal work. I assume that this was some kind of face-saving device
because he didn't want to admit that he was in the wrong. I could have
argued with him but it wasn't worth the trouble because he was also handling
the subsequent sale and it gave him a very compelling reason to get things
done properly and to ensure that the purchaser was fully satisfied with the
situation with regard to the covenant. I wanted to make sure that there
could be no come-back from the purchaser claiming that he had been deceived
on the subject of the covenant or the dispute with the neighbours. The
neighbours were in the wrong and complied with the conditions of the
covenant very reluctantly. They were very hostile towards me for simply
defending my right to protect my property from illegal parking.

I certainly wouldn't use this solicitor again or recommend him to anyone
else. It's my belief that he was acting beyond his competance by grabbing
part of the property action in the boom years before the price crash of the
early 90s.

Cic.