Land Registry questions

rogcal · 27 September 2017 at 10:42PM

Thanks James, I have already signed up for alerts on my property (and the one I'm buying) and have also read on the LR website that for £40 you can have an entry made on the register for your property that ensures certain additional procedures must be carried out before any changes are made. I shall be doing that for my new property but it beggars the question that with rising LR title fraud, why don't the LR make it part of the process when registering all titles to a new proprietor and that way make fraud nigh on impossible. With all transactions being covered with this extra protection it would be very cost effective and perhaps as little as a tenner would need to be added to the standard fee.

Land_Registry · 29 September 2017 at 10:48AM

rogcal wrote: »

In 2003 my wife and I entered in to a mortgage with Abbey National and in 2005 we remortgaged with Halifax at which point the Abbey mortgage was redeemed.

In 2015 we paid off the Halifax mortgage.

Fast forward to today and we get a call from the solicitor handling the sale of our property advising that in Feb 2010 a charge was entered against our property in the register and as we had told them we were mortgage free, could we explain why Santander had a charge on our property.

I suspect that when Santander finally finished operating Abbey in Jan 2010 they went through the "books" and for whatever reason decided to enter a charge on the register against our property.

It's only at times like this that you wished that there was some form of automatic notification made by the LR that a charge is made against your property. In our case it's just a bloody nuisance that needs sorting out and hopefully will not delay the sale of our property but the possibility of people committing fraud by borrowing money on property they do not own would be made that little bit harder if home/land owners were notified when a charge was placed on their property.

I suspect the reality here was that the charge had never been removed when redeemed as the change form Abbey National Plc to Santander was in early 2010 and the registered details would have simply been updated re that change

So no new charge was registered just a change to the details fo the existing one.

Land_Registry · 29 September 2017 at 11:00AM

rogcal wrote: »

Thanks James, I have already signed up for alerts on my property (and the one I'm buying) and have also read on the LR website that for £40 you can have an entry made on the register for your property that ensures certain additional procedures must be carried out before any changes are made. I shall be doing that for my new property but it beggars the question that with rising LR title fraud, why don't the LR make it part of the process when registering all titles to a new proprietor and that way make fraud nigh on impossible. With all transactions being covered with this extra protection it would be very cost effective and perhaps as little as a tenner would need to be added to the standard fee.

The restriction you refer to is aimed at owners who do not live at the actual property against which they wish to register it.

Our Blog article will be of interest as far as our thoughts around the subject and the services we offer.

rogcal · 29 September 2017 at 12:06PM

Thanks LR.

Although I can understand the need to have the restriction on the title for properties at which the owner does not reside however, fraudsters are getting very sophisticated and accessing and diverting an owner occupier's specific mail i.e. mail from the LR, is not beyond the realms of possibility. Think of carers and others that may have access to a vulnerable person's property on a daily basis.

For the sum £40 and even though an owner occupier, I shall be protecting the title of my property.

On the matter of the Santander charge, as it is on the title of some land associated with the title of our main property, I suspect that the solicitor dealing with the redemption of the Abbey mortgage overlooked the fact that the mortgage charge was applied to two titles and only applied to have it removed from one, leaving the other remaining and which in 2010 was changed from Abbey to Santander.

jamesd · 29 September 2017 at 12:38PM

Could you clarify a difference in requirements in the RQ form please?

Section 4: an individual must declare "I am not/we are not living at the property and do not intend to do so." No time bound, any intention to live there ever and you're barred.

Section 5: a conveyancer must declare that "I am instructed that they are not living at the property and have no immediate intention to do so."

Why the huge timescale difference between only immediate future if a conveyancer submits the form but to the end of time if a proprietor does?

This is relevant to me since I own a long term vacant property that I intend to get refurbished before it becomes my home some months later. With many more people having access the fraud risk will increase for a while but I seem barred from applying for the protection except via a conveyancer.

Of course Land Registry processing times may make this useless for the time at increased risk, though the restriction would presumably remain.

I also wonder what additional protection "No disposition of the registered estate by the proprietor of the registered estate is to be registered without a certificate signed by a conveyancer that that conveyancer is satisfied that the person who executed the document submitted for registration as disponor is the same person as the proprietor" adds, given than mandatory money laundering identification requirements imposed on solicitors and other conveyancers? In particular, a solicitor acting for a vendors is required to verify the identity of their customer and one acting for a buyer or lender is required to obtain certification that this has been done. At least based on a recent decision where a solicitor was ordered to pay redress after failings in this process, though I forget which end of the transaction they were on. Not the SDT case in my next post. So what gap(s) is the restriction trying to close?

Not expecting perfect protection, rather trying to learn more about the subject. Not just interested for my own property but also to learn more in connection with checking the security proffered in P2P lending, which can sometimes be ... less than precisely as described.

jamesd · 29 September 2017 at 1:20PM

rogcal wrote: »

fraudsters are getting very sophisticated and accessing and diverting an owner occupier's specific mail i.e. mail from the LR, is not beyond the realms of possibility. Think of carers and others that may have access to a vulnerable person's property on a daily basis.

You might find the five fraudulent transactions described in the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal decision in the case between Solicitors' Regulation Authority and Ernest Hedwa M u g a d z a* of interest. The solicitor was ordered to be struck off so he could no longer practice after he hired two apparent fraudsters then carried out requests from them to transfer money to parties not connected with a transaction or an entirely bogus transaction. The frauds are described starting at paragraph 12 on page 4.

The second case notes an absence of any evidence of due diligence to identify the purported selling client. Not that it would necessarily have helped because the solicitor concerned hadn't noticed forged employee documents.

In these cases the attack was at the solicitor's firm which was required to carry out the identity checks, apparently circumventing the RQ protective restriction's protection even if it had been present. Of course total protection is very tough. And none of the sales actually got as far as a successful transfer of ownership at the Land Registry, it was the buyers and lenders who could have lost money. That being the critical protection for owners that is at the core of the LR duty, so good that that aspect worked ultimately.

In the peer to peer lending first fraud in paragraph 12 the lenders got all of their money back about a month later but I don't know who paid.

*Please don't remove the spaces, the individual is also a victim and while I should give the case name I chose to do it in a way that makes searches less likely to find it.

F_Bear · 29 September 2017 at 9:34PM

need some help regarding the splitting of a property which basically made the workshop and house 2 different property's, a and b. A been the house and B the shop.

a contract was written up with shop plus 1 metre of land around said shop. land register drawing only shows 1 meter around back of shop, not the side :-/

new owner moves into house and says we have no right to use the 1 meter along the side as its not on the land register map.

where do we stand?

G_M · 29 September 2017 at 9:42PM

F_Bear wrote: »

need some help regarding the splitting of a property which basically made the workshop and house 2 different property's, a and b. A been the house and B the shop.

a contract was written up with shop plus 1 metre of land around said shop. land register drawing only shows 1 meter around back of shop, not the side :-/

new owner moves into house and says we have no right to use the 1 meter along the side as its not on the land register map.

where do we stand?

Duplicate post. See

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5719713

(I hate these....)

Land_Registry · 29 September 2017 at 11:03PM

jamesd wrote: »

Could you clarify a difference in requirements

It's all about your interpretation. Your own statement that you do not intend to is the same as a conveyancer stating you have no immediate intention to do so.

The basic premise behind the purpose of the restriction is that absent owners can seek additional protection. If you are buying a property and doing it up to live in you do not intend to be an absent owner by most definitions.

[QUOTE=jamesd;73191964_I_also_wonder_what_additional_protection_"No disposition of the registered estate by the proprietor of the registered estate is to be registered without a certificate signed by a conveyancer that that conveyancer is satisfied that the person who executed the document submitted for registration as disponor is the same person as the proprietor" adds,[/QUOTE]

The certification is with regards the disponor's identity and whilst the checks you refer to are anticipated the lodging conveyancer is only required to confirm that they are satisfied that sufficient steps have been taken. Certifying the identity as per the RQ is a step further

Land_Registry · 29 September 2017 at 11:04PM

F_Bear wrote: »

need some help regarding the splitting of a property which basically made the workshop and house 2 different property's, a and b. A been the house and B the shop.

a contract was written up with shop plus 1 metre of land around said shop. land register drawing only shows 1 meter around back of shop, not the side :-/

new owner moves into house and says we have no right to use the 1 meter along the side as its not on the land register map.

where do we stand?

G_M has covered it in the duplicated thread

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