Buying
Covenants, Easements And Rights Of Way
Obligations and rights attached to land pass to whoever owns it next, which is how a buyer inherits a duty they never agreed to and a neighbour keeps a right they never paid for.
A title can carry rights and restrictions created decades ago by people long gone. They survive changes of ownership because they attach to the land rather than to a person.
Two different mechanisms
A covenant is a promise about how land may be used, usually recorded when a plot was first sold off a larger estate. An easement is a right over someone else's land.
The first restricts the owner. The second grants something to a third party, such as a neighbour's right to cross a driveway or a utility's right to run cables beneath a garden.
Both are recorded against the title where the system provides for it, which is why they surface in the legal work rather than at a viewing.
Restrictive covenants and what they typically say
Common restrictions prohibit trade from a residential property, limit further building on the plot, control the height or position of fences, or require alterations to be approved by an original developer.
Some are current and enforced, particularly on managed estates. Others are historic curiosities whose beneficiary no longer exists or can no longer be identified.
The difficulty is that an unenforceable covenant is still recorded, and the process of establishing that nobody can enforce it costs time. Insurance products exist for exactly this uncertainty.
Positive obligations behave differently
A positive covenant requires the owner to do something, typically to maintain a shared drive, a private road, a pumping station or a boundary structure.
These carry a recurring cost that continues indefinitely, and on modern estates they are often the mechanism behind charges a freehold house pays for communal land.
How positive obligations bind successive owners is a technical question that differs by jurisdiction and is addressed by different legal devices, so local advice is required rather than general reasoning.
Easements are usually invisible on site
A right of way may be a track that is obviously used, or it may be a paper right nobody has exercised in a generation but which remains available.
Rights to run services, to enter for repairs and to drain water across neighbouring land are frequently reciprocal, so the property both grants and benefits from them.
A buyer should identify not only what burdens the property but what it relies on. A house whose drainage crosses a neighbour's garden needs that right to exist in writing.
Why they matter more than they seem
Plans for a property, from a home business to an extension to a boundary fence, can run into a restriction that was invisible during the search for the house.
Lenders take an interest because a breach can, in some circumstances, lead to enforcement action that affects the value of their security.
Reading the title entries before making an offer, rather than after, is the point at which this information is still cheap to act on.
Questions readers ask
Does the tenancy end when the property is sold?
Usually not. In most systems the agreement continues on its terms and the buyer becomes the landlord, which is why the paperwork must be checked before exchange.
Can I buy a tenanted house to live in myself?
You can, but you need vacant possession as a contractual term and a realistic timetable, because ending a tenancy takes time and follows a prescribed process.
