Buying Commercial Property · glossary
Incumbrances are rights or burdens over land that someone other than the owner holds, such as restrictive covenants, easements, leases and mortgages. A sale contract lists the ones the buyer takes the property subject to. The seller must clear the rest, such as its own mortgage, by completion. The word is also spelled encumbrances.
Burdens on land that someone other than the owner can enforce. In the contract, the Incumbrances are the 1962 covenant in entries 1 and 2 of the charges register, and the land is sold subject to them. Northfold's charge is not one, because it is paid off. Definition: Incumbrances · Chapter 3 · see Charges register
Explained in Chapter 3, Reading the Title, of Buying Commercial Property.
The Contract calls entries 1 and 2 the Incumbrances (clause 1.1) and sells the land subject to them, so they stay with the land after completion. An entry does not prove that a covenant can still be enforced. It means only that a buyer cannot take the land free of it.Read Chapter 3, Reading the Title →
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the matters contained or referred to in entries 1 and 2 of the charges register of title number WYK712408, which Annex 2 sets out;Read the definition in the document →
Anything that limits the owner's use or ownership: a mortgage, a lease, a neighbour's right of way or a covenant not to build. Most appear on the register at HM Land Registry, but some, such as rights of people in actual occupation, may not.
Both are correct and mean the same. Incumbrance is the spelling in the Law of Property Act 1925 and the Standard Conditions of Sale, so property contracts often use it. Company documents usually say encumbrance.
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