lizzie

Oh dear it does sound as though he was very foolish with the developers

Nice windfall for the neighbour! Let us hope he feels a generosity of spirit towards his departing neighbour and does what they want to sort the sale for you. Fingers crossed.

I think you will find that when the lawyers look at it that it may not be as simple.... trust me I have spent 30 years living with a lawyer I know how hard it is to get a straight answer to the simple question 'would you like a cup of tea' LOL! But seriously they need to tell you what their sticking point is and then you will have to see how your neighbour reacts....or more likely his lawyer. The simple amendment of one word in a sentence can change the whole sense of it and a lawyer will look at it that way. I think you may find yourself in a 3 way lawyer situation and that means time and money unless everyone is eminently sensible and reasonable. If you removed or changed 'single private dwelling house' then it needs very careful wording so as not to leave scope for future owners to use it in all sorts of ways...bed and breakfast, hmo for students, or even a bail hostel for instance, how would that be for the neighbours.......Amending a covenant may seem simple but can be fraught.

Thats a bit different to Jeremy's neighbour having the benefit of the covenant. The type of 1950's developer covenant you mention is very insurable and cheap to do. Chancel is not the same thing. Church tentacles reach far and chancel became almost a standard for conveyancers to recommend on most property until the stop date came in. We had land that once belonged to Church of England, we did not have a chancel liability however the Diocesan solicitor that we had to deal with on covenants was non other than the man who caused the Chancel debacle cascade through his war with the Wallbank family in Aston Cantlow. That is just a few miles from us we knew the case very well and the property. It made history and is a precedent, through all the appeals and misery We were at the auction when the Wallbank family finally sold the property after settling with the Diocese after many many years of legal wrangling and untold tens of thousands in legal fees.

It will be number 2 and this is a standard covenant. Insurance not suitable in this case. Your religious ppl probably looking at some sort of place of worship or school. This covenant is a positive to most purchasers as they would not want to find themselves next to a ‘business’ in a residential development. The covenant will be on all the properties built there. I would just move on to the next in line. It wont be an issue. Just your unusual prospective purchasers. One in million chance very frustrating for you.

That sounds very positive Jeremy. Good luck. If you have your title docs from your bank you should be able to find it there. Some years back the Land Registry did away with 'title deeds' and now just issue a certificate and that has all the extracts on it. Its no substitute for the actual deeds especially historic ones and if you have those they are worth keeping and handing on to a purchaser. In your bank bundle you hopefully will have a document named Epitome of Title which is is the tree and gives the root of your title. You can trace from that. If your covenants are so recent it should be easy to spot.

@bissoejosh A covenant is there for ever unless it has an expiry date built in. Where they are historic and the beneficiary of the covenant or their successors in title cannot be found then there is a procedure to insure against the covenant being exercised. Solicitors are well used to this scenario. The only person who can release a covenant fully is the beneficiary or their successors in title of that covenant.

@JSHarris so sorry to hear this. I think you said it was a religious organisation of some sort buying I think. Maybe they wanted to use it for 'business' and the covenant prohibits. Covenants are not on searches they are attached to your title. Your solicitor should be able to send you a copy. There may be more than one 'restrictive covenant'. Hopefully your back up buyers are still around.

@Vijay looked out our quotes. Our largest slider is 3500mm overall split 50/50 fixed and slide. The Internorm quotes for that window started off at £6700 for upvc. We ended up at circa £4500 for up spec ali clad/timber with laminated glass. That was not from the company who gave the first quote although they did come down quite a bit on their initial price. There is room for negotiation dont just take one quote and the first price. The pricing on the windows must have some upper and lower guides to keep all the resellers in some sort of order but seems to me that 10% min is achievable. They set their own fitting fees so room to chip there. If you get someone reasonably local to you then their fitting fees may be more flexible and reasonable than someone like ecohaus who operate nationwide but send teams out from their home base so possible extra transport/hotels etc factored in. We had lots of quotes and samples of windows/frames.......Kloeber, Velfac, Ideal Combi, Rationel.....all half the price of Internorm but they were not able to do the big slider in the same way as Internorm they had limitations on size of glass. Some of them had really nice slim frames but I wanted the biggest glass and I did not want an uneven split which was what they were offering to get the size. The quality of the Internorm products was to my mind streets ahead of the others but you pay for that quality. I asked all to quote for the lowest possible threshold and some did have a flat threshold but I cant find the detail at the mo....the limitation on the size of the glazing was my focus at that time. My friend had some from a place in Coventry and she is happy enough with them but they were a compromise as her original window provider went bust with her 10k deposit and the time it takes to sort that out would have cost her a lot in delays so she had cheaper windows to keep on time but I have seen them and they look fine. Not Internorm but perfectly ok at a third of the price. Not sure if they could do your sizes as she ended up with bifolds on her very large (circa 4m) openings. If you want the name let me know and I will look it out.

you dont need my neighbour because my outside water is not on the halcyon and is the same water as neighbour. I can give samples if with and without

@Nickfromwales you can have as much water as you like, presumably it would have to get to @JSHarris to do his magic. Wish I had lovely welsh water no need for gadgets then......my Mother always used to tell us that Welsh girls had lovely skin due to our lovely water......she didnt say and all the rain that came to provide it LOL The Welsh are coming to ‘warm’ the house this weekend......too many for beds so camp out on air beds in the living room....no doubt will be a loud and long night ahead, maybe I will have to water the beer!

Looks good, well done. 5mm not a problem pretty much perfect I would say.....I had 40mm in one area, 25mm in others and lots of dips that were between 40 and 25 deep.....140 bags of levelling compound, mine could never be level just flat according to floor layer who did it. Enjoy the well deserved G&T's

Grey no question. Love the pizza box duct tape thing what a great idea!

Yes I have seen them........just got to remember where!

My final comment on the subject..... @richi I don't know Polly she was not involved in my purchase (bought a year ago). I can tell you having lived with it for 4 months now that my lovely (and large) shiny chrome bathroom fitting do not have scale they have a sort of water marking which is very easy to clean off. It is definitely different to 'normal' water and my and OH skin has improved here, we both developed skin problems at the rented house due to the awful water and the water supply is the same awful water here at new house so I am very aware of the improvement and the only difference in supply is the Halcyon device. I should be on commission!!! LOL

Yes local free page ..... recycle them

I agree @Declan52 and @richiits getting boring!

The proof of the pudding guys....whatever the science I dont care I have much nicer water with my Halcyon than without. Having thought about it since the earlier post I realised that my Halcyon is fitted in the plant room so its all indoor water on that and all garden water is straight from the main so if I was inclined one day when I have ‘finished’ I I could sample the two...sample in usage not science I mean. I was banned from the science lab at school.....too much of a danger LOL

There is an express service its called a personal search it is not as comprehensive as a full search as some of the infomation in a full search takes more time to access - anyone can do a personal search if they so wish....local searches are just one element of course there are other searches such as title, drainage etc etc. but they are generally quicker to be processed. The online conveyancers such as the purple bricks use teams of unqualified box tickers for 99% of the work and it is then reviewed at stages by a qualifed person. That is why they cannot respond to queries or take phone calls they are not able to answer questions they just input info into a system and anything outside the box causes headaches. They work to a pre planned timetable and are not geared to speed up a transaction. Its a tick box system and they can only go to the next stage when all boxes in previous stage are ticked. Great if you have a standard job not so good if it needs any skill or expertise. Their fees are on a par with most High St solicitors. There is room for the factory tick box system for run of the mill transactions in a busy but not very profitable field of law. PP and their ilk make their profits from little or no client contact and unqualified staff. Your High St practice is not set up that way so the conveyancing is much less profitable. Its a very competitive market too.

@Vijay yes thats the blog entry. I will have a look out my internorm quote see it says what mine were individually I have 4 lift and slides of varying sizes. My biggest is 3.5m. I got quotes from several different Internorm dealers and they varied by several thousand pounds so its worth sending your spec out to a few not just one.

Vivinez mentions the cut outs for the lift and slides in her slab blog...she shows a photo of timber pieces set in to make the necessary gaps for them to sit on. I dont know for sure about others with level thresholds because I decided after looking at samples of Rationel Ideal Combi Kloeber and Velfac that I liked the quality of the Internorm best so I didn't delve too deeply. I did get quotes so I can look back and see what they quoted for on thresholds....will let you know.

Local searches are one of the main hold ups in some areas they are taking 8 weeks. Alternative is a much less comprehensive personal search at a greater cost. If you are having a mortgage you have to have a local search. If you are buying cash you would be foolhardy to instruct your solicitor to proceed without one.

I agree I wanted bifold and was shouted down by everyone. I have internorm lift and slide and they are beautiful however I would say a word of warning if you are going for level thresholds (see vivinez blog on how to do it correctly) that whoever is doing the slab is aware of how they should be set in. My so called professionals....pm, window installer and slab ppl (although to be fair to slab ppl they only worked from pm/window company drawings) made no provision clearly none of these people had any idea what they were doing with these windows. I had leaking windows held us up for 3 months or more caused lots of damage and a lot of money to sort out and they all dodged it. I could have done better on my own.....expensive lesson again. Go for lift and slide you wont regret it just fit them properly. LOL

Don't have white grout please. It will likely go yellow if not grubby. Silver grey much better.

in experiment terms it may be deemed subjective but I know from use the water is better than the rental house nearby and better than my neighbours which comes off the same main. Whatever it does and however it does it I am happy with it.