New hens not going into Eglu Go Up

[Goldstar]

We have decided today that we want to move house. The house we are in at the moment has no restrictions on keeping poultry/livestock.

I was wondering how other people have got on when they have moved/wanted to move about finding out about restrictions?

Would the estate agent know or would you have to wait until you view the the property and ask the sellers?

 

Does anyone have chickens even though their deeds say they cant have them?

 

Any replies would be gratefully received. Thank you.

[migsy]

I've got no idea what is on the deeds of my house!

[Olly]

Most sellers probably won't know if there's a restriction on the deeds, nor will the estate agents - it's something you tend to find out only at the point when your solicitor gets a copy of the title register. It's probably more likely with modern houses than it is with Victorian ones, but I don't think there is any way of telling until you've got a bit further down the line unfortunately.

 

Take a look at the sticky in Chickens where there's a section on 'Legalities', that might be helpful too - but I would caution against relying on any of the advice in there, it's not been tested in court and buying a house isn't the sort of thing where you want to take a chance!

[majuka]

Personally I wouldn't like to rely on the advice of the estate agent with something like that and sellers can be a little less than honest. When we moved into our first home we asked the seller if we could keep bikes on the landing (we were the only flat on the top floor in the block). She told us yes, everyone does and prams etc. After we had paid survey and legal fees the leasehold info came back that no bikes could be stored on the landings. We managed by leaving the bikes at my Dad's, which was 5 minutes away, but obviously you couldn't do that with your chickens!

 

We have a copy of our deeds that we could show to prospective buyers if they asked regarding chickens. Ours state no pigs or 'other offensive animals' - however you interpret that! I think I would want to have seen some written evidence before exchanging any money.

[Mercedes55]

I would agree it's best to let a solicitor to check this out once you find a house you want to buy. I know on modern houses there is often a covenant that restricts you even doing something simple like building a wall in your front garden on those open plan kind of estates, so it could be the same with keeping chickens maybe.

 

Our house is a newer house and when we checked the deeds before we got our hens there was stuff like not being able to have a window on one of the walls even though it is about 100ft from any other houses, but it was what was agreed on when the house was built and as has already been said most home owners aren't even aware of these things.

[bennett]

to be honest we have never looked into it, we just bought chickens and that was it! I guess it really depends on how many chooks you have. I am guessing that most people dont look into the legal side. We moved in jan of this year and our chooks werent anything we thought about, we just moved. It wasnt until about 3 weeks later that the neighbours realised we had them lol. I know you can under the allotment act keep chickens on allotments and council houses though as a friend of ours lives in a HA property

[karena]

I'm no lawyer, but I thought there was a legal right to have chickens, some post war legislation, and that would trump anything in the deeds. Plus for stuff in deeds to be enacted, it would need someone to do that. The police aren't going to check up on people's deeds, it would take someone choosing to find it in their deeds and then taking action (which I would have thought would be civil).

 

Some deeds say you can't hang washing out, but after the developers have gone, who on earth would enforce that?

[Leicester_H]

Similarly, I am no lawyer - but I am cautious by nature.

I believe that any people (inc builders) can freely agree contracts that are more restrictive than the law of the land - so a covenant in house deeds is enforcable (BUT I beleive it is only enforcable by the orignal contractor).

Its unlikely to be a problem, but I would check first (our deeds say we can't keep animals for breeding - so 3 female chooks are fine)

H

[a m j]

Our deeds/restrictive covenanat say that we are not supposed to keep poultry or livestock!

I class our 3 girls as pets!!!! We did speak to our neighbours before we got the girls, and they didn't mind at all.

We are on a 'new build' estate' and I believe the restrictions are placed by the original builders to 'preserve the appearance of the development'. It's 10 years since we moved here, and several of the other neighbours have not adhered to the restrictions, ie fences/caravan/sattelite dishes etc. so we decided to get the girls.

Sorry if that's not much help to you though.

[alet_chicken]

Hi, we moved house about 6 months ago. When looking at houses, we did make a point of explicitly asking about this (estate agents probably thought we were bonkers), and a number of places we looked at had this type of information in their HIPs.

 

That said, we did move into our current place with a bit of trepidation, as it only takes one complaint from a neighbour... Fortunately, so far, so good, as one of our neighbours has hens herself, the closest neighbour to the hens regularly buys eggs from us, and there is another flock of chickens on the same block.

 

I understand that some councils (e.g. York) will not enforce poultry covenants, so a covenant may not be the end of the road. As others have said, best to have your solicitor check this out.

[Leicester_H]

I understand that some councils (e.g. York) will not enforce poultry covenants, so a covenant may not be the end of the road. As others have said, best to have your solicitor check this out.

 

Have read about this quite a lot, I don't think ANY COUNCIL can enforce a covenant in house deeds - only the 'person' who wrote the covenant can.

Councils will (I beleive) only be interested in nuicance issues (smell, noise, rats etc) - so if you keep the neighbours happy, you should be fine.

H

[Mollie333]

Hi

 

 

I'd look into it first before buying, unless you are prepared to be told that you can't keep chooks and end up rehoming them. I'm not going to lie. I'd lived here for three nearly four years now, and been keeping chickens since December 09!(I know- thats it. ) But they were only small birds, Pekin bantams, and wasn't too loud actually seeing as we have a big garden surrounded by alot of other wildlife. I suppose the neighbours couldn't complain as we live next to a house which has a shed full of pigeons! Now how many clutches do they have a year?!

 

 

Mollie