Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption
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Frewen Feltmaker
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indemnifying an unadopted roadLatest issue - apologies if it bores people 
We live in an unadopted road and apparently a £175 indemnity will be needed against our purchasers finding they no longer have access to their property (wasn't needed when I bought the house  )
so who pays - purchaser or seller ?
If it's me as the seller - do I have any comeback on my previous conveyancer for not picking this up?
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judith
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That sound very much like the £125 "insurance" that we had to pay just in case the leasehold owners of our previous house suddenly emerged from the woodwork demanding back ground rent.
The fact that the ground rent was almost certainly something like threepence ha'penny p.a. and we only lived there for 5 years didn't rankle at all. Oh no, not one bit. 
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Cathryn
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We insisted that this was paid for by the owner of the house before we agreed to buy it. I think it's a case of negotiation? We were annoyed and insisted because they had cut corners, the house was built by them and it would have been an easy matter for them to get it sorted before they built it.
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Cardinal Fang
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Normally, it's the Seller who will pay this, though occasionally, some Sellers will say 'Take-it-or-leave-it', and then it depends if the Buyer really wants to lose the house for the sake of a couple of hundred quid.
Depends whether it's so obvious that your solicitor should have picked it (no right of way) up when you bought.
You should bear in mind that the title indemnity industry has really taken off in the past 5-10 years, and a lot of these insurance products weren't around to be taken out several years ago, in which case it was a case of assessing the risk of any comeback.
It's also instructive that some of the premiums are ver low (eg £20 for lack of building regulation consent) which tells me that this is essentially money for old rope for insurers.
A lot of 'flow-chart' conveyancers these days can't or won't stand back, exercise some judgment, and just look at the risk they are seeking insurance for.
Example- extension put on house 15 years ago without planning permission. The practical reality is that the local authority cannot take any enforcement action now as outside the 4 year time limit, yet you still get the 'computer-says-no' school of conveyancers insisting on insuring the fact that the planning permission was not obtained....
That said, indemnity insurance for lack of right of way has been around for some time now, and one of its advantages is that normally, you only need to show 1 year's use of a right of way to get insurance at a very modest cost, whereas typically you'd need 20 years' use to establish a legal right where nothing in the deeds, and even then, no certainty if challenged.
HTH
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