Overage for Conveyancers - A Timely Update

Introduction

The importance of accurate drafting is the keystone of overage agreements. The same applies to detailed commercial sites as well as the domestic conveyancing client selling off a piece of potential development land at the back of the garden. If left to the courts to interpret the result may well be something neither party wanted.

Protecting the rights once agreed is another fraught area and whether you deal with overage agreements regularly or seldom come across them it is timely to revisit the essential features.

What You Will Learn

This webinar will cover the following:

• The nature of ‘overage clauses’ - is there more than one type and why have them at all? Typical problems of construction and interpretation
• Ways in which overage rights can be protected when property changes hands. Restrictive covenants and restrictions, mortgages and lease back
• Will the overage clause run for a certain duration or depend on an agreed event happens? The price and how to calculate it. A set figure or a formula?
• Is the overage clause absolute or depend on action by one of the parties? What is a ‘trigger event’?
• Clauses in a typical overage agreement
• Common errors in drafting and potential liability in negligence for the conveyancer
• What are ‘permitted disposals’?
• What will the court imply?
• Questions of construction
• How hard do you have to try to make overage happen?
• Gaia Ventures Limited v Abbeygate Helical (Leisure Plaza) Limited [2019] EWCA Civ 823
• What is meant by ‘detailed planning permission’?
• Loxleigh v Dartford BC [2019] EWHC 1274 (Ch)
• You’ve got planning but you can’t use it
• London & Ilford Limited v Sovereign Property Holdings Limited [2018] EWCA Civ 1618
• What about tax in the context of overage?
• Comparison between overage agreements, conditional contracts and option agreements
• Can you buy and sell overage rights?

This webinar was recorded on 24th February 2021