Land Registry questions

Land_Registry wrote: »

You must have set up an alert against that particular title. But there's no way of checking what it is online via the website.

When you set up the alert had you checked the title number? And are you the owner?

Alerts are intended to notify you of applications against titles you own. The idea being that you own it so if you don't know who the applicant is then there's a possibility it might be fraudulent or an application to protect some other interest.

Do you own the title against which the alert has been linked to?

Thanks for the response. I set up the alert against our house address which my wife and I own outright. I certainly didn't set up an alert for 'land adjoining' the house but that's what the LR has alerted me about. We do of course own the front, rear and side gardens. Unless someone is trying to steal our garden it can only be the Council garage block behind our back fence where we have right of access to our owned garages. As also suggested I'll check the Council Planning Portal. Of course, it might be just a change of ownership of the access area in which case presumably the access right will continue.

Land_Registry wrote: »

Alerts are intended to notify you of applications against titles you own. The idea being that you own it so if you don't know who the applicant is then there's a possibility it might be fraudulent or an application to protect some other interest.

A bit of feedback on this, since it has more potential than that. Here are the titles I might sensibly monitor via this service:

1. A currently vacant flat I own.
2. A flat where I'm the tenant.
3. A house owned by the estate of a parent, where I'm one of the beneficiaries of the estate.

While I own only one of those, I have a pretty clear interest in the state of all three but not necessarily knowledge of all legitimate transactions. Hopefully the Land Registry would agree that at least for those three circumstances I have an appropriate interest.

Beyond that, I know of people who use it for monitoring the state of properties that are being developed or are used as security in peer to peer lending. The P2P platforms are often less forthcoming than desirable so monitoring things via the Land Registry can provide useful information, including information about problems. I don't personally do this, at least not so far. Less direct personal connection but at least to me there seems to be a legitimate interest in the property to protect via monitoring.

For the same reason it's quite routine for some lenders or groups of lenders to check the information held at the Land Registry. Partly because platforms sometimes miss things and partly because sometimes they provide inaccurate descriptions. During the duration of a loan things can change, particularly for development loans, and the monitoring is of use there, say when UN1's are filed for advance sales or when a property that is supposed to be security for a loan seems to have been sold. There's a clear financial interest in the property in these cases but it's not an ownership interest, more akin to that of a mortgage lender or prospective mortgage lender. In the P2P case each individual lender normally has a right to that property security via a contract with the borrower, with the overarching charge placed by the trust company operated by the peer to peer platform. As you've seen from our other discussion, I had a pretty clear interest in the ownership status of a property because it was an asset potentially available for debt recovery and the risk of an inappropriate or illegal transaction came from the owner of the property.

Perhaps room here to consider the broader range of interests beyond pure direct ownership that apply and how the already very useful service can assist in protecting those more disparate interests.

In the P2P case I don't know how those doing it deal with the ten property limit, I suppose multiple accounts or monitoring just the properties where they have the greatest loss exposure. The amounts at stake can vary greatly between lenders, from a few Pounds to in excess of a hundred thousand Pounds per property, with most at the lower end. While I wonder whether a charging service might be useful I think that a charge might discourage too many users. Yet the Land Registry faces significant cost control and revenue making pressure, at least judging from press reports, so maybe something would be appropriate beyond some use limits. A way to get more information than the current reports, given the lack fof direct ownership, might also be a useful incentive to pay some modest charge to get routine access to that information.

With regard to the previous system that required things like photo-identification of property owners, I was interested because I owned a vacant flat that presented a fraud risk. But the photo-identification requirement caused me to decline to use it and provide feedback on this to the Land Registry. I was very glad to see the change to the current system and used it to protect that property as soon as I learned about it.

Some of the uses I've described are quite different from actual ownership but all seem to have a legitimate interest of some kind, some of them fraud risk mitigation, others not.

Could the Land Registry please advise what the current wait time is for title plans to be updated? There was a dispute over a strip of land next to a house we are purchasing. I understand that the seller and their neighbour have reached an agreement and that the paperwork was sent early last week. We were planning to complete around 10th September, but have been told it may be closer to the 22nd now due to delays with the land registry.