Planning clause and selling house before 5 years

J

johnnyg

Registered User
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A friend of mine plans to sell her house but she has a 5 year clause from the county council when she was granted planning, the house is 3 years old..is this possible from a legal point or can she sell full stop. Can the council enforce this clause or is it up to the solicitors?
 
I was looking at houses before and came across this, i believe in the planning it states that the house may be sold before the 5 years for the purposes of facilitating the mortgage company, for instance if she was uanble to pay her mortgage and the mortgage company wanted her to sell it to recoup.

Anyway, the house i refer to had a 5 yr occupancy clause alos, i know the person is under some financial pressure, he was able to come to an agreement with the Co. Council in the area to come out of the agreement early.

Perhaps if she got on to her Solicitor, perhaps he/she would be able to advise of an appropriate course of action.
 
if this is the case, that there is a get out clause, how can they prove otherwise?
 
As far as I know you can overcome the five year clause if it is due to circumstances that could not have been foreseen when seeking and obtaining the planning
Factors such as
*Serious Illness and
*Financial trouble
would be the two main ones.

But proof would have to be given to County Council of reason
 
Hi,

If you can prove you are in financial difficulty you can get out of the clause - but it may come against you in future if you look for planning permission again.

Angela59
 
can I ask a perhaps dumb question here but assuming that the buyers don't go pulling planning files 2/3 years old, what is stopping the sale anyway. How will the Co Co find out? They hardly trawl EA windows and myhome.ie looking for breaches so assumming no neighbour brings it to their attention and the buyer doesn't go looking for the clause - do you not just sell and hope they don't spot it - a bit naughty clearly but I'm not too sure of the policing of some Co Cos re: the finer points of planning stipulations (a friend was told to paint his house only a certain colour which he did, only to change it to what he wanted 6 months later - no clause saying he couldn't 'change it' ... God bless interpretation!
 

I presume the buyer's solicitor will discover it when they do their pre-completion searches?
 
.. you'd like to think that wouldn't you ... can't say I've been too impressed with things I've found out post-purchase from my (ex) solicitor ...
 
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