Land swap...

lavalamp

I have a scenario on which some opinions/advice would be greatly appreciated….

I own House A with a mortgage
I will own House B outright and let it

House B has a parking lay-by which is adjacent to House A. It’s across the street and some 10m from the door of House B. House A’s parking lay-by is some 60 meters away in the opposite direction, so can be inconvenient for unloading etc.

The plan is to buy House B (outright, no mortgage as the additional amount needed can be raised against House A) and rent it out with use of House A’s parking lay-by and to use House B’s parking lay-by for House A. Ultimately (5 or so years down the line), when we sell House A, we would like to sell it with House B’s parking lay-by. How simple is that procedure - i.e. swapping lay-bys by way of land registry? Are there restrictions if there is a mortgage on one of the properties?

Any advice welcome :-)

G_M

Yes, any change to the Title of a property with a Charge on it will need the consent of the mortgage lender.

It sounds like the swop is unlikely to affect the value of the property so the lender should have no objection.

ask.

lavalamp

Thanks G_M. It would have an effect, my belief is that it would increase the value, so hopefully that's a positive for the mortgage company as well as me :-)

Land_Registry

If the parking bays form part of the existing registered titles then to 'swap' them you would probably either need to split the two titles and then amalgamate the parking bays into the other titles. Or when you sell House B you complete the sale by way of a Transfer of part and retain House A and parking bay B.

Historically the change would have been left until you sold but nowadays lenders especially like a clean title so any buyer's lender would probably want the swap done before they agree to lend.

As G_M says as things currently stand your existing lender would need to consent to the change

lavalamp

Thanks Land Registry rep - that is really helpful.