Land registry mess up

Olliesuz

I would really appreciate some advise if anyone can give me the benefit of their wisdom. I bought a small parcel of land last year, and all went well with the purchase until some months after completion when the land registry sent back the details of the plot of land now registered to me. The plot registered missed off the end of the area that I had actually bought. When I queried this, my solicitor discovered that part of the plot had not been correctly registered to the seller when ho purchased it originally. He is very elderly, and when I checked with him his conveyancing solicitor has long since retired, so how can I set the record straight so I can be registered correctly as the current owner?:)

xylophone

Surely your solicitor should be dealing with the matter?

Mojisola

Olliesuz wrote: »

When I queried this, my solicitor discovered that part of the plot had not been correctly registered to the seller when ho purchased it originally.

Shouldn't your solicitor have checked this before you bought the plot?

davidmcn

Did your contract to buy the land include the bit you don't have title to?

Olliesuz

The solicitor tried to correct the mistake by submitting a statement of truth which declares the original boundaries and what was originally purchased my the seller. For some reason it seems that the land registry have not accepted it. The original contract indicated the plot but not in relations to neighbouring plots so it was impossible to see that the top edge had or had not been included The solicitor seems a little stumped now as to how to make progress. It's all costing more than I expected and with no progress. I feel like it down to me to come up with some kind of solution but have no experience in these matters. Thank you for reading and for your thoughts.

davidmcn

If your seller can't or won't resolve it, then I presume you'll need to find out who has title to the bit you're missing, and approach them to buy it.

xylophone

If the solicitor does not know how to proceed then he should consult a more knowledgeable colleague?

moneyistooshorttomention

I'm in the process of sorting out a very similar situation.

Possibly what happened to you is what appeared to be the case when mine got Registered. When my house first got Registered/given a Title Plan it was not clear enough to them exactly who owned a bit of my garden.

Since that time, however, the Land Registry now knows what neighbours there are in other possible contender houses, ie because they now have a Title Plan or, in one case, have applied to the LR to be granted my land under adverse possession (and, in the process, the LR now knows it isn't their land). You can spot the gleeful smile on my face that the squatter has asked for AP (because they don't fulfil the criteria to get given it - but have proved to the LR that they aren't the owner of it by the mere fact of asking for it - heh!). That's because you can't ask for your own land, indeed don't need to ask for your own land (asking for AP proves it isn't yours in the first place).

That's the thing - ie an LR person told me in a recent phonecall that they had previously had no idea who even owned any neighbouring houses that hadn't yet been Registered/given Title Plans, still less the extent of their ownership of land.

In a nutshell, it looks as if the LR didn't want to add my odd bit of land to my Title Plan just in case it belonged to a neighbour they weren't yet aware of (ie because of them still being on Deeds), but now they know what the neighbours do and don't own, then I'm in a much better position to have that bit of my land Registered to me and added into my Title Plan.

As more and more houses get Registered, it will become clearer and clearer where the boundaries lie between neighbours properties and who owns what. So its quite possibly the case that the situation is already rather clearer than it was in previous owners time.

Start by asking for all adjacent Title Plans from the Land Registry.

silvercar

If the seller didn't have title to all the land they have sold to you, then their solicitor should be sorting it out. Their solicitor that is handling the sale to you now, not the conveyancor solicitor from when they bought it. Otherwise they have sold something to you that is (part) not registered to them; how can they do that when they don't have title?

Land_Registry

As others have mentioned when you purchase a piece of land or a property it is essential to check that the seller has title to it either as per the existing registered title, through original deeds if unregistered or through a valid claim as to ownership based on their occupation/use of the land/property over a period of time.

The conveyancer will invariably check such things and also ask you, where the title is registered, to confirm that the registered extent matches what exists on the ground.

From your posts it is unclear whether the part now registered in your name was already registered or not. If it was then I suspect the sale went through based solely on the existing registered title so the issue may lie in whether you were asked to confirm that the registered extent matched what you were buying and if so what response you provided?

If all the land was unregistered then the issue may be more to do with the conveyancing although nowadays many conveyancers will ask for an unregistered title to be registered before buying to avoid such issues arising.

Our Practice Guides 4 and 5 explain the requirements for registering a claim as to ownership in certain circumstances and will help to understand what evidence is required to support such a claim - I assume that the subsequent statement of truth fell short on those requirements and if it did then this will have been explained to the applicant when rejecting their application.

If you can provide a little more detail around how this situation has arisen then others may be able to provide a little more 'wisdom' on the subject for you although as mentioned already legal advice is really what you need as claiming land in this way is a very complex area of the law.

It may also help to understand whether this was a conveyancing 'mess up' rather than a Land Registry one although that is not to say that we don't make errors on first registration but I assume that has been explored if the land bought was already registered.

AdrianC

Was the plot registered by the vendor - either as part of the sale or previously - before you bought it?
Did you confirm the boundaries with your solicitor as part of your purchase paperwork?