Implications of Possessory Freehold Title?

Aunty_Iris

Hi all!
Hoping for some help here - we are in the process of buying a house and have now found that the owner of 35 years has lost their Title Deeds. They have now been granted Posessory Freehold title by Land Registry. We are now unsure as to whether to continue with the purchase as we are unsure of the implications involved. Unfortunately our solicitor has not been very helpful in this matter. Has anyone else had this experience? Is there insurance to cover not only our original investment but also the improvements we need to make? Any advice would be most welcome - thank you.

Richard_Webster

You can take out possesory title indemnity insurance. The seller should be paying for this as they lost their deeds, not you!

Most companies offer it in £50K price bands so if e,g, you were buying for say £160K then you would probably find that £200K's worth of cover would cost no more - some companies offer an additional 5% escalation of cover for each year for 10 years. If you cannot make use of the price band point ( and to do so you would have to make sure your solicitor understands what you mean because in my experience a lot of solicitors don't) then you get your sleler to make an allowance for the premium that covers the price and you pay your solcitor the extra and he arranges a policy for a bit more to covere anticipated increases in value.

Your solicitor should also be satisifed that they genuinely have lost the deeds and there is no scam involved or it isn't a case where there is a mortgage the family had forgotten about and the lender still has the deeds....it does happen!

TJ27

I bought my house with possesory freehold. As Richard has said, you simply take out a one off insurance which isn't very expensive and should be paid by the vendor.

You can convert to absolute title twelve years after the house is registered with the land registry. In our case, when we bought the house it had been registered seven years prior. So we waited for another five years and converted to absolute title. It was very simple to do and I think it cost me about fifty quid or something.

Aunty_Iris

Many thanks, Richard. It has certainly shed a bit more light for us. The idea of a scam hadn't even entered our heads. I think either our solicitor should pull their finger out or we appoint a new one. Kind regards.

Aunty_Iris

Thanks TJ27. Our vendor has only just registered the property which means we'd have to wait the full twelve years. We're worried that if we don't stay there the full term we may have trouble selling. Richard's mention of a possible scam has also troubled us so we must make sure our solicitor is on the ball! Best wishes to you, 'Aunty Iris'