Old Solicitors (who we bought house with) didn't cover all aspects of purchase

mathie

Hi

I'm selling my house now and it turns out that the property was never registered with the Land Registry.
We bought it a few years ago.

Should the solicitors we purchased with have pointed this out?

We have to register it now and incur all the the costs that our solicitor is going to charge us.

Any advise appreciated.

Thanks
M

grumpytrousers

not everything has to be registered with the LR; there are a few counties where if, after a certain date, you buy a property that's on the Reg of Deeds system you (or rather your solicitor) have to go and move it 'over' to the LR system.

Whether your solicitor should have done it or not is not, really, for anybody on the forum here to answer as one would be veering perilously close to offering advice and so forth...

If you are, however, in a place where the compulsory registration applies then, whilst it most likely would have made more sense for your solicitor to do the registration as soon as you bought the house, the fact is that the same amount of work has to be done, and he should - one would think - not be charging you any more for this work of Registration.

templetonpeck

mathie wrote:

Hi

I'm selling my house now and it turns out that the property was never registered with the Land Registry.
We bought it a few years ago.

Should the solicitors we purchased with have pointed this out?

We have to register it now and incur all the the costs that our solicitor is going to charge us.

Any advise appreciated.

Thanks
M

Do you mean it's registered in the Registry of Deeds and now has to be registered in the Land Registry?

Oh! I see Grumpytrousers as already dealt with this.

mathie

Hi guys

Thanks for the input.

templetonpeck that's right our property is registered with the Registry of Deeds and is being registered with the Land Registry at the moment.

I was told that we might encounter difficulties with registering with the Land Registry. Not sure why though.

templetonpeck

mathie wrote:

Hi guys

Thanks for the input.

templetonpeck that's right our property is registered with the Registry of Deeds and is being registered with the Land Registry at the moment.

I was told that we might encounter difficulties with registering with the Land Registry. Not sure why though.

It's impossible to say why you'd encounter difficulties without seeing your Deeds. The Land Registry are extremely thorough and it does take time, but most queries are answerable and their fees are not high.

Compulsory Registration is easy to miss, particularly in such a busy climate. Of course that's no excuse, just an explanation. EG it's necessary to register Title in the Land Registry if the property is owned now, or has been owned in the passed by a statutory authority and it is sometimes easy to overlook what constitutes a statutory authority (I say sheepishly )!!

The process is quite easy for you, you sign two forms and your solicitor looks after the rest. If you are selling on now, as soon as your solicitor lodges the application in the land registry you're ready to go.

Roanmore

I've just discovered this has happened to me as well. I bought my house 6 and a half years ago. I've recently went to re mortage and have changed solicitors. The bank informed my new solicitor that the deeds are with my old solicitor. For abour 8 weeks I pestered my old solicitor to return the deeds to the bank (on the recommendation of my new solicitor and the bank). Each time I was told that yeah, we're looking after if and they will have them soon. Then last Monday (3 Sept) I rang again and was told the Land Registery have them. I have since found out that they were only sent there on Aug 15th this year. Should this have been done when I bought the house.
Also, who holds on to the deeds, is it the solicitor or should the bank have them as until the mortage is paid they really own the house.