Restrictive covenants are restrictions on what you can do with your property, whether that be to prevent certain uses or specific activities on a piece of land. These restrictions “run with the land” and therefore apply before and after ownership of land changes. The older the restrictive covenant is, the more difficult it may be to identify the land that has the benefit. It may also be the case that very old covenants have been rendered obsolete because they have been breached many times over the years without the owner of the benefiting land doing anything about it.
Restrictive Covenants
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Who can enforce a restrictive covenant?
A restrictive covenant if breached can only be enforced by the owner of the land with the benefit of the right. This can often be hard to establish with old covenants especially where lots of smaller plots have been carved out of a large estate of land and each small plot has been built upon and sold to different owners. It may be the case; if one developer has built numerous houses on a large piece of land; that the buyers of each plot have been granted rights to enforce restrictive covenants against every other plot owner. If you require any assistance in establishing who has the benefit of restrictive covenants on your land, we can take steps to look into this for you.