Restrictive Covenants · Report on Title scenario
Ask for consent, and ask before you exchange. A covenant prohibiting animals without written consent binds you from completion and covers more than people expect — ordinary household pets, not just livestock or pigeons. Consent is usually given without difficulty. What causes the problem is doing it in the wrong order, because the covenant is breached the moment the animal moves in.
From the e-ROT archive
This scenario is drawn from Report on Title material dealing with this specific circumstance.
More than the word “animal” suggests to most people. These covenants commonly name any animal, bird or reptile, and mention pigeons and domestic livestock expressly because of the era they come from — but a cat is an animal and a budgerigar is a bird.
They bind you as the incoming owner and they bind anyone who occupies after you. They are not personal to whoever agreed to them.
If a covenant has surfaced since completion, what was reported to you about the title during the purchase is where the question starts.
Find out what should have been explained → WhenIBought.comThese covenants are commonly found on former public housing, and the body that originally held the right to consent frequently no longer exists in that form. Reorganisation and stock transfer move the benefit somewhere, and establishing where is part of the work.
Your conveyancer identifies the current holder of the consent function from the title and the transfer. That identification is worth asking about explicitly, because an application sent to a body that no longer holds the benefit is not consent.
Because consent takes time and because you lose your choices after exchange. If consent is refused or delayed and you are already bound to complete, you have a house you must buy and a pet you cannot lawfully keep there.
Tell your conveyancer about every animal you intend to bring, even ones that feel too ordinary to mention. The Lexsure wording below makes the position clear: silence is taken as confirmation that you have no pets, and no application will be made.
Written consent is what counts. An assurance on the telephone that nobody minds is not the thing the covenant requires.
From the e-ROT archive
Report on Title paragraph
This covenant binds you as incoming owner and any future occupier. Keeping any pet or animal at the property without first obtaining written consent would place you in breach, potentially giving rise to enforcement action. It is important this is resolved before completion.
**Action Required**
Please consider carefully whether you own any animal, bird or reptile — including common household pets — that you intend to keep at the property. If so, please notify us **before exchange of contracts** so that we can apply to [xxxxxx] for consent on your behalf in good time.
If we do not hear from you on this point, we will proceed on the assumption that you have no pets you wish to reside with you at the property and no consent application will be made. …
Master precedent wording. This is current Lexsure Report on Title material, shown here in extract and reproduced exactly, including the merge placeholders and the markdown emphasis a conveyancer completes. It is professional precedent wording and is not advice about any particular property.
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