Last summer, when we started up this blog, I wrote a post about title searching. I was thinking about this yesterday after I saw a client buying a property in the area that had a restrictive covenant on it.
A restrictive covenant is a requirement that you either do or not do something with your land. Generally, they are negative: you can’t build a fence, or you can’t have a clothesline attached to your house. More rarely, they are positive: you must keep landscaping maintained, or you must maintain a road. In this case, there is a restrictive covenant over a large portion of the municipality because of a rail line that runs through it; these clients are nowhere near the railroad, but the restriction is still there.
Most of the time, restrictions that we find on title are innocent or will not affect you in any way. We still search, however, because we want to make sure your property is not the one with the restriction you can’t live with.
