Property Deeds

i240_Dan

I purchased a property in March.

There is an alley way about 3m wide which runs down the side of my house (end terrace), down past the rear of all the houses on my terrace and then back down the side of the house at the other end.

Each of the houses on the row have put up fencing with gates in so that the right of way is still there but they each can now have their own back yard.

Prior to purchasing the house I downloaded the land registry title deeds of all the houses down the terrace to see if anyone had actually laid claim to the land.

None had and we accepted that it did not affect us and it being fenced off had a number of benefits to us in that less people would walk down it and no one can drive down it.

I was however speaking to the owner of the house on the opposite end of the terrace. He insisted that he did in fact own the part of the alley directly behind his house.

I told him that Land Registry did not show him as owning it. He then showed me the deeds to the house in which was the original division of his house from the rest of the terrace as it had all been classed as one property and was legally divided up for individual sale when the mill which owned the houses closed.

He has since spoken with someone at the local council who told him that the original deeds would over ride the land registry title and therefore he does actually own the land.

The point now being that the land registry may also be wrong on my house and I may own the land to the side and rear of my house.

I asked my mortgage lender to send me a copy of the deeds so that I could check for myself.

I have today received a letter enclosing a copy of the land registry title. The letter states that all deeds were digitized as of Oct 2007 and are no longer stored by your mortgage lender.

Has anyone got any knowledge of how I would go about seeing the original documents relating to my house?

Do I need to apply through the land registry some how?

Thanks

Daniel

Richard_Webster

I told him that Land Registry did not show him as owning it. He then showed me the deeds to the house in which was the original division of his house from the rest of the terrace as it had all been classed as one property and was legally divided up for individual sale when the mill which owned the houses closed.

If he has a copy of an old document that shows all the land in one ownership that is all very interesting but the crucial point is what was sold to him or his predecessors. If they only got the house and garden without the backway then then this may well still belong to the millowner and may not have been sold off with the houses. Mill owner company gone into liquidaiton perhaps some years ago ?- Nobody claiming ownership of backway and people move their fences etc.?

If neighbour thinks he owns more then he can apply to the Land Registry to get his title rectified. I bet when he goes to see a solicitor they tell him he hasn't a chance....unless he can acquire by adverse possession, but that is a differnt matter altogether.

Unless he can show a conveyance to him of the land then he doesn't own it and what the person at the Council said was rubbish. This implies that the Land Registry got it wrong when they first registered the title. They do occasionally make mistakes, but it is much more likely that he or his predecessor didn't get the backway when the houses were sold off. In the meantrime I would simply say that you wnat to see his regsitered title and until you do you are not going to accept he owns it

i240_Dan

I'm not sure if the conveyance he showed me had his name on it but it was all hand written and he was not the first purchaser of the property so the document does not directly relate to him.

Please can you confirm whether the original sale documents, deeds and conveyances are now stored by Land Registry, as of 2007 and how I can get hold of a copy of them.

Are you saying that because I bought the property with the boundary as it is on the Land Registry Title Deed this then over rides the original boundary of the property on the original sale conveyance.

I also appear to be using the words deeds and conveyances at will. I'm not particularly sure I'm using the terms correctly.

Thanks

Daniel

Richard_Webster

I'm not sure if the conveyance he showed me had his name on it but it was all hand written and he was not the first purchaser of the property so the document does not directly relate to him.

So was it just of his house or a much larger area? If it was just of his house did it show a strip of the accessway on a plan as being included? If it was of a larger area it means nothing at all. I suspect that is the case and that is the end of the matter.

Are you saying that because I bought the property with the boundary as it is on the Land Registry Title Deed this then over rides the original boundary of the property on the original sale conveyance.

Obviously it must be possible to sell off parts of an area of land.

Before Land Registration separate sets of deeds were not created when houses were built but only when they were sold off separately. So if the house was sold off before registration became compulsory in the area (it has spread through England and Wales starting in Inner London in 1899, didn't get going seriously in built up areas outside London until the 1970s and finally became compulsory everywhere in December 1990.) there would be a conveyance of the land with a plan showing the extent of the land conveyed. When the property changed hands they wouldn't have bothered with another plan but would have referred back to the original conveyance.

When the area became registrable next time house was sold they would have looked back at the original conveyance plan and registered the same area so the likelihood is that this didn't include the access way. It is possible the LR made a mistake and if an earlier conveyance could be produced showing the accessway then the title plan could be rectified, but frankly it isn't very likely, because you would have expected the then buyer or their solicitors to have pointed out the mistake at the time.

Once a title has been registered the pre-registration deeds are not really needed so they get lost, turned into lampshades, etc, etc. The electronic record at the LR is what is important. The only deeds we use are now are for transferring registered property and they geernally have a limited life. Land Registry register the details, scan them in and destroy them!

i240_Dan

The document my neighbor showed me was the original conveyance which showed the terrace which contains six properties.

At one time the whole terrace was owned by the local mill owning family. An old woman who lives three doors down from me is one of the children of the family and at some point in her 80 or so years has lived in pretty much each of the cottages.

The conveyance showed houses 1-7 shaded blue including the alley at the side and rear of my house (No. 1) and the alley at the rear of 3,5 and 7.

It also had number 11 shaded red including the alleyway to the side and rear (the house the conveyance related too).

Number 9 had been the first house to be separated from the row and on the conveyance number 9 and the alley directly behind it were unshaded.

It would appear therefore that at some point the entire terrace and the alley to the sides and rear were one plot of land. Then number 9 was separated and conveyed including the alley behind and then in the conveyance I have seen number 11 and the alley to the side and behind it were separated and conveyed. This leaving 1-7 and the alley to the side and behind left as one property.

There does not seem any reason why someone would have since sold off the alley to the rear and side of number 11 separately. And similarly there does not seem to be any reason why the land to the side and rear of the remaining houses which were separated and conveyed later would have not included the alley.

I have just read through the Register of Title for my property and under the heading 'Schedule of restrictive covenants' of the conveyance dated 26th Feb 1901 it states that "Note: -No plan was supplied on first registration"

Could this be why the land might no have been drawn correctly on the Land Registry large scale map?

Do you think that the original conveyance for my house might have been destroyed?

How would I go about getting copies of the conveyance if it has been scanned and is being stored by Land Registry?

Daniel

Richard_Webster

When was the title to you property first registered? Usually after the formal bits at the beginning of the substance of the registers just before a statement like "The Freehold land shown edged red on the plan of the above Title filed at the Registry and being 1[Some Street Somewhere SQ9 8QX]...." Just before this will be a date in brackets in the format (dd.mm.yyyy) - that is normally the date of first registration or at least the date this title was opened.

What is the date of the conveyance of number 11?

The 1901 conveyance referred to may have been of a larger area of land and the point about the plan being lost would be more to do with the area that some old covenants applied to.

It is possible that if the first conveyance of number 1 was a long time ago the original conveyance had been lost (war damage?) by the time first registration took place and the LR only had the postal address to go by so they registered what looked like the area included in number 1 on the Ordnance Survey plan of the area.

It is unlikely that preregistration deeds will have been scanned in by the LR - they would have checked them through and returned them to the then submitting solicitor. Mortgage lenders used to keep deeds packs which typically included a bundle of preregistration deeds. They got handed on from lender to seller's solicitor to buyer's solicitor to new lender. The lenders stopped wanting pre-registration deeds a few years ago and buyer's solicitors either kept them because they forgot to send them to their clients or they did send them to their clients who may still have them. So your seller may have them or a predecessor may have them. or they may have been destroyed or lost.

At the end of the day as you and neighbours have a right of way through these pieces of land ownership of the land wouldn't prevent others exercising their right of way, so I am not sure that the exercise is really worth it except from a purely academic point of view.

i240_Dan

The main reason I would like to have ownership of the alley is that I own a double garage and some land to the side of it which is separated from my house by the alley at the rear. Ownership of the alley would make my plot of land continuous and allow me to use it as a garden and maintain it properly. I could also use the alley to the side as a private drive which is what the chap at number 11 has done, putting up a proper gate at the end etc.

It would also make the land I own one continuous plot rather than the house and the garages separated by the alleyway.

Below is a copy of part of the Register. Blue land is the garage and pink is the house.

Seems that my house may have been separated from the rest of the terrace on 28th Sept 1959?

I'm not sure of the date on the conveyance my neighbor showed me.

Richard_Webster

PM me your address and postcode and whether you are right or left hand end of terrace looking from road and I can try to find it on aboutmyplace.co.uk or GoogleEarth then I 'll understand the position better.

i240_Dan

The picture below shows two images, the one on the left is the Land Registry Title Plan for my house showing the house in pink and the garages and land in blue.

The image on the right is the Title Plan I downloaded for number 11.

The alley can be seen running behind (the left) of number 11 and the rest of the terrace.



The conveyance my neighbor showed me had a line from the bottom right corner of my garage plot of land running parallel to the south wall of my house as per the diagram below With his house edged in red, 1-7 edged blue and 9 had already been sold off.



Daniel

Richard_Webster

The neighbours have fenced the access way so that it looks as if it is within their gardens but with gates either side so people can get through from one end to the other if they want to is that right?

I can't offer any explanation for the red colouring/edging of 11 as the colouring in general you have described is consistent with the sale off of number 11 with the blue area being the retained land of the seller which would probably be referred to in the conveyance, e,.g to give rights for services to go through the land or as being the area to have the benefit of any covennats entered into by the buyer of 11.

I did notice that there wasn't any reference to this right of way you referred to in your first post in the extract from the LR entries for yor title. Does it appear later?

i240_Dan

That is right about the fences.

There is a mention of Rights of Way towards the end of that section of the Title I posted earlier.

Here is the title in full. Its the copy of that relates to the previous owner as I don't have a digital version of the one with my name on it.

C, 4, b appears interesting as it refers to an uninterrupted right of way over and along the north easterly boundary to gain access to the footpath at the south east corner and the road at the front of the house (south west).

Does this relate to the pink area (house) or blue area (garage)?

The north east boundary of the house as is on the Land Registry for my house which I posted is the wall between my house and number 3.
I presume it is referring to the land between my house and garage which I must allow a right of way over. For me to have to allow a right of way over the land to me implies that I own it, but I could be wrong.

The path to which it refers is no longer in use but from the remains of a couple of steps it looks like it used to run alongside the south face of the blue land on my register.

If the right of way does refer to the house and not the garage then it would not be correct to refer to the path as being at the south east corner of my land as it would be separated by the alley.