Registering house with Land Registry- first time

Draylon

I am an executor of my recently deceased parent's Will, with a house which will be sold.
I am just 'swearing the oath' away from Probate (I hope!).
The house has never been registered with the Land Registry and I'm told that some EAs/buyers solicitors will insist that it is before they'll proceed.
What's the mechanism for this? Can I register it in a deceased person's name, then, as Executor transfer it from that to a new owner? There are 4 unequal beneficiaries to the estate- it'd surely be daft to have to put in in all three persons' names for what might be a couple of months, wouldn't it? And two beneficiaries are minors!

Thanks

Di-Dough

Although buying/selling an unregistered property is less common than it used to be it still happens. Your Solicitor will prepare an Epitome of Title (basically a list of all relevant documents showing who has owned the house in the past leading up to the present owner - and will include the Probate document) and this will go the buyers solicitors. I have never come across a solicitors asking for the property to be registered beforehand if they have all the relevant documents. However if you wanted to go down that route before putting on the market the Land Registry will say the proprietor is the deceased persons name but noting they died on .......... (date)

HTH

Di

Land_Registry

My own experience (England and Wales) is slightly different from Di-Dough's in so far as there are times when a buyer will ask for the title to be registered before they will buy but much will depend on their conveyancer/mortgage lender.

Enquiries from customers tend to suggest that this is more likely where the owner has died and even though unregistered properties have been sold many times over the years conveyancing views have changed a little in some cases/places

Obviously I only get to see the enquiries made so there could be lots of examples where such sales are completed without question.

The other aspect to consider is that we would not register a title for the first time in the deceased's name and then make an entry to state that they had died. We make such an entry against an already registered title where we are noting the death only I'm afraid.

In the circumstances you refer to it seems prudent to apply to register in the names of the personal representative(s) as named in the probate and in their capacity as PRs. Our online guidance explains how to register for the first time and what is required re the deeds and forms. You would need to include and official/certified copy of the probate as well and complete the form FR1 to refer to the PRs as the applicant

If the buyer is happy to proceed with the purchase of the unregistered title though then the deeds + probate will hopefully be sufficient

izaac

Thanks. We've moved on a bit since my last post in that I now have the Grant of Probate. I was speaking to the LR (about another matter) and the (helpful) person I spoke to said us getting the house registered prior to sale is a bit of a hassle, especially with 2 minor beneficiaries involved as we'd have to hold their portion 'in trust' (which I guess, with Probate, we already do!) til the sale. She also said a first registration is already taking around 2 months so we might be better off to try and sell it 'as is', handing over the Deeds to our selling solicitor to hand to their to scrutinise etc.

wwl

I spoke to a solicitor about this after an estate agent said it would help if the property was registered.
Solicitor said it was nonsense, and made no difference, and might slow things down as you'd have to wait for the registration to go through before you could start the sales process.

BobQ

izaac wrote: »

Thanks. We've moved on a bit since my last post in that I now have the Grant of Probate. I was speaking to the LR (about another matter) and the (helpful) person I spoke to said us getting the house registered prior to sale is a bit of a hassle, especially with 2 minor beneficiaries involved as we'd have to hold their portion 'in trust' (which I guess, with Probate, we already do!) til the sale. She also said a first registration is already taking around 2 months so we might be better off to try and sell it 'as is', handing over the Deeds to our selling solicitor to hand to their to scrutinise etc.

There is no right answer other than to say you do not have to register it before sale but that it may be helpful to do this before sale.

The point is that it may put off potential buyers for the reasons given above. Also, if you simply await a confirmed offer you run a higher risk of your buyer pulling out when they realise that in addition to the normal wait they have to wait 2 months to sort out registration. Another factor is that on registration it only needs some simple irregularity (say a title plan being drawn differently to a neighbouring (registered) property ) to introduce additional delay.

I think it is better to register yourself and make this clear to potential buyers. With any luck the process will be half complete by the time you get an offer.

wwl

BobQ wrote: »

There is no right answer other than to say you do not have to register it before sale but that it may be helpful to do this before sale.

The point is that it may put off potential buyers for the reasons given above. Also, if you simply await a confirmed offer you run a higher risk of your buyer pulling out when they realise that in addition to the normal wait they have to wait 2 months to sort out registration.

But surely that 2 months is just the time for all the registration to be complete, in their name. Assuming they weren't planning to re-sell it immediately, would it actually delay anything in practice?

DandelionPatrol

izaac wrote: »

Thanks. We've moved on a bit since my last post in that I now have the Grant of Probate. I was speaking to the LR (about another matter) and the (helpful) person I spoke to said us getting the house registered prior to sale is a bit of a hassle, especially with 2 minor beneficiaries involved as we'd have to hold their portion 'in trust' (which I guess, with Probate, we already do!) til the sale. She also said a first registration is already taking around 2 months so we might be better off to try and sell it 'as is', handing over the Deeds to our selling solicitor to hand to their to scrutinise etc.

This gives cause to think. It can be useful to keep the house in the estate before sale. So unless you know for sure that you will not want to take this option, do not rush to register in the names of the beneficiaries.

I don't know whether it is possible to register in the name of the estate of the deceased, but this may be the thing to do if you don't want to pass the house to the beneficiaries before sale.

So don't do anything about registration until you know how you want to deal with the house.

BobQ

wwl wrote: »

But surely that 2 months is just the time for all the registration to be complete, in their name. Assuming they weren't planning to re-sell it immediately, would it actually delay anything in practice?

Yes and no.

If a buyer comes along and makes an offer, and you say the property is unregistered, they might be cool with it, but they might not. They might just go elsewhere unless it is the house of their dreams. When I sold my parents house (unregistered) one buyer made an offer after a second viewing but then withdrew as soon as he realised the property was unregistered.

Similarly a neighbour's house went up for sale when he died and an offer was accepted quickly. The buyer then insisted that it was registered first but due to an ambiguity over a sale that took place 50 years before it tool 4 months to register. Fortunately on that occasion the buyer waited but did haggle about the legal costs of registration.

No right answer, it depends on folk!

wwl

But does the registration process actually slow down the process of buying and moving in?
Is it not the case that on completion the buyer takes posession of the deeds and registers it under their own name?

BobQ

wwl wrote: »

But does the registration process actually slow down the process of buying and moving in?
Is it not the case that on completion the buyer takes posession of the deeds and registers it under their own name?

Absolutely true, if the buyer is content to do this it is allowed. But if the buyer says my offer is conditional on the vendor registering the property first they can do this.

It does involve additional work. How much is down to how complete is the evidence trail of past ownership.