Land registry question - should I be worried?

BlaEm

Hello helpful people!

Background: I completed on my leasehold 1st floor maisonette back in December - the seller was also the freeholder, and leaseholder of the downstairs flat.
I was granted a Deed of Surrender for a new 125 year lease, and also provided redrawn lease plans to correct an issue with the external boiler cupboard attached to my flat initially being included on the plans to the other flat.
It was an utter pain to get all this through so was a relief when we finally exchanged.

Fast forward to now: I noticed that my purchase has not yet appeared on the land registry, thinking this is beyond the usual 3-4 months I got in touch with my solicitor. Further, I had seen that the ground floor flat is now up for sale so I wanted to make sure that the redrawn plans for both flats had been registered properly.

Initially I received the response:
"The Land Registry are still dealing with the application. On any new Lease/Deed of Variation it does take longer. We have been in contact with Land Registry and they will send the deeds as soon as it is complete."

Fair enough - but then today I received a follow up message "The plans are with the Land Registry, however they have not been approved by them yet due to the seller's solicitors delay in repaying the mortgage. I am sure it is only some sort of lack of communication between the seller's solicitors and the Land Registry."

Cue me starting to panic, as I'd thought the whole point of completing is that any previous charges are settled and my deeds can be registered.

Does anyone have any thoughts on what my next step should be? Is this something I need to be concerned about? Any advice or experience (especially from the Land Registry rep?) would be greatly appreciated.

BlaEm

[gently bumps]

Jugers

It sounds like you have what is known as a "Tyneside Flat"? It doesn't sound like you have anything to worry about, just let the process take it course. The beauty of this type of property arrangement is that both you and the owner of the downstairs flat have equal say in everything, as you own the freehold for their property, and they own the freehold of yours.

BlaEm

Hi Jugers - sorry if my earlier post wasn't clear:
I do not own the freehold at all, I own the Leasehold of Flat 1; the chap who sold it to me previously owned both Leaseholds and the Freehold, and now owns the Freehold to both and the Leasehold of Flat 2 (until he sells that on..)

silvercar

BlaEm wrote: »

Hi Jugers - sorry if my earlier post wasn't clear:
I do not own the freehold at all, I own the Leasehold of Flat 1; the chap who sold it to me previously owned both Leaseholds and the Freehold, and now owns the Freehold to both and the Leasehold of Flat 2 (until he sells that on..)

I suspect your last few words hold the key. He probably wants to limit his legal costs and is trying to tie everything up at the same time.

BlaEm

That's pretty cheeky - the other flat is currently tenanted and has only just been put on the market, so it's not going through any time soon.. Is there not a time limit I can enforce? And wouldn't his solicitors' have wanted to be paid for the sale of Flat 1 when it completed anyway?

Richard_Webster

Usually the seller's solicitors will pay off the mortgage on the day of completion and should have given an unqualified undertaking to do so. This undertaking is enforceable ultimately by hauling the solicitor up before a disciplinary tribunal - so it is pretty serious.

What happens in practice is that sometimes they do not pay the right figure to the lender and so the actual discharge is delayed. This can be because of negligence on the solicitor's part or because of the obscure way some lenders quote the figures e.g. sometimes they assume that a repayment due betwweeen the date they give the figure and actual completion /redemption date will be made. Seller goes and stops the payment and drops his solicitor in the proverbial. Answer is for solicitor to hold back an extra month's payment and only release it gto his cleitn when the lender has produced the discharge - sometimes necessary - but not very popular with clients!

Other problem is that some lenders get the money but take absolutely ages to priovide the discharge -meither in documentary form or by sending an electronic message to the Land Registry.

Land_Registry

Others have already largely covered why there could be a delay here.

Yes, new leases are one of the types of application which are taking longer to complete from a registration perspective although December is, as you already appreciate, perhaps a longer delay than normal.

However it sounds as if there is an added complication around the mortgage redemption but Richard Webster has covered that already.

The key now is to ensure that if we have requested the additional paperwork that this is now provided asap. I don't think it would be a 'lack of communication' between ourselves and the lender that would be an issue here as most lenders communicate such details electronically from computer to computer so it may be something the other party's solicitor needs to be pursuing with the lender with due reference to the undertaking as mentioned.

If you contact us with the specific details of the address/title number then we should be able to give you some indication as to the current state of play from a registration perspective

benjus

It took 7 months to get my leasehold purchase registered, and that was without creating a new lease. Most of that was due to delays in getting consent from the freeholder and management company.

BlaEm

Thanks everyone for your very helpful comments - the seller's solicitors were more than useless throughout so it wouldn't surprise me if they've been negligent.
I'll leave it with my solicitor to keep chasing the other solicitor for now and will be in touch with Land Registry directly if we still aren't getting anywhere to see what the current status is.

Thanks again.