Restrictive Covenants

Restrictive covenants on property & land

Restrictive covenants are restrictions that are put onto land to prevent people from performing certain actions on it. The most common restrictive covenants are;

• To disallow any building on a section of land
• To disallow any business activity on the land
• To disallow any use of the land which is not agricultural

If the covenant has been properly prepared it can restrict the use of the land for any future buyers or developers. This means that the value of the land is likely to remain the same. An example of this would be if there was a covenant restricting building on a section of land which prevented the owner from extending their house or from building a new one. This would mean that the value of the land and property would be unlikely to have a drastic increase in value as the owner would only be able to carry out internal renovations. This can put landowners as significant losses compared to if their land did not have a restrictive covenant placed on it.

In many cases, a restrictive covenant will be written into the title of the property and will not be legally enforceable due to the way that they have been written. If there is a covenant on your property that you wish to look into you should seek the help of a solicitor who will be able to work out if it is enforceable for you.

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