Contact us

If you would like to find out further information on how our insurance can help surveyors, please contact Paul Denholm

Paul Denholm

Tel: 020 7160 8610

Email me

• Home
• Surveyors

Surveyors

We can provide a range of solutions to assist you in advising your clients when negotiating and structuring property transactions.

Obtaining finance

In the current market, obtaining finance for a project is proving increasingly difficult. Lenders want assurances that their investments are sound and that your client's development will not be blighted by problems such as restrictive covenants or access issues. All our title insurance products automatically provide cover for the mortgagees as well as the landowner.

Commons and Village Green

Few large-scale planning applications are passed without objection first being raised by adjoining property owners and other interested parties. As these individuals become better informed, the use of legal ploys to try and hinder development is becoming more commonplace. One such ploy is to seek the registration of the development site as Town or Village Green, which if successful will prevent any building whatsoever from being constructed. First Title offer insurance against the development site being successfully registered as a Common or Village Green and will protect the developer against the subsequent loss in market value of the land and abortive planning costs that will have been incurred prior to the registration.

Sales Conditional on Planning

You are acting for a client who is selling a property conditional on the successful grant of planning permission. Once the planning permission has been granted, there is a three month and fourteen day judicial review period during which the planning permission can be challenged and quashed. The client needs the funds from the sale urgently, however the buyer will not pay to complete the sale until the judicial review period has expired. First Title's judicial review policy has been used to allow the completion of sales and the commencement of development, within the judicial review period. The policy provides coverage against a range of losses: -

1. Loss in value of the property in the event of the planning permission being quashed by judicial review;
2. A wide range of covers including the legal costs involved in defending the judicial review application, the interest payments on the loan which are being accrued in the event of an interim injunction being granted against the developer and if necessary, the costs of submitting a revised planning application.

Construction

Your client's need to maximise the development potential of this land leads to the construction of taller buildings in more and more confined areas. Such development has inevitable consequences on adjoining properties, particularly in relation to the amount of light that they will continue to receive and there is no certainty that your client will be able to complete the development if a third party seeks to enforce their rights of light.

Once you have established which parties may be in a position to obtain an injunction to protect their right to light or are entitled to compensation for more minor infringements, First Title will work in partnership with you and your client to agree a scheme for your client to deal with the most injured parties and then insure against the risk of other right to light claims.

Selling

Once the development is complete your client will be keen to find a purchaser as quickly as possible. Our title insurance policies cover your successors in title and lessees, so the purchaser and their lenders will automatically receive the benefit of our protection once the sale is complete.