What does Covenant mean?

Whereas a contract is a bilateral legally binding both parties involved document, a covenant resembles or can be described as a unilateral document in which the covenanter imposes certain restriction on the covenanted.

For example, in laws pertaining to housing, a covenant might determine the materials a house has to be built from in a certain area, or it might restrict the plantation of certain types of trees because that might represent a sort of danger, or it simply can determine the number of buildings allowed to be constructed on the respective property.

These restrictions usually have the role of maintaining a status in a certain district for example, and to generally defend the value of the surroundings and implicitly of all the homes in that respective area.