Land Registry Delay

cellista

We are in the process of selling and buying a property. Before we accepted an offer on our flat we extended the lease, this was completed on 26/7/2015 and sent off for registration on 31/7/2015. The solicitor was told there was a backlog and it should take 40 days to register.
Today, 28/8/2015, the solicitor called the council and they said they were dealing with registrations from April, so the delay will be very long.
This will mean we might loose our buyer, plus loose the property we want to buy.
Does anyone know if there is anything we can do to ensure we do not loose these?

DandelionPatrol

cellista wrote: »

We are in the process of selling and buying a property. Before we accepted an offer on our flat we extended the lease, this was completed on 26/7/2015 and sent off for registration on 31/7/2015. The solicitor was told there was a backlog and it should take 40 days to register.
Today, 28/8/2015, the solicitor called the council and they said they were dealing with registrations from April, so the delay will be very long.
This will mean we might loose our buyer, plus loose the property we want to buy.
Does anyone know if there is anything we can do to ensure we do not loose these?

Councils do not register leases, it is the Land Registry. So either you got that wrong or your solicitor or their junior is fobbing you off.

If the extension has been done, your solicitor ought to have documentary evidence which should be adequate to convince your buyer's solicitor.

cellista

Sorry .. of course it is the registry, I got that wrong not the solicitor :-)
The problem is that completion cannot happen before the Lease extension is registered - Is that true ??
All the other things are fine, even exchange.

Land_Registry

cellista - there are delays in some types of application, including lease extensions.
The 40 working day timescale is the current average.
If there is a linked transaction, such as an onward sale, then the applicant (your solicitor) will hopefully have contacted us to advise and to request that we expedite the registration - if they have done so but it is still not completed then it may be worth checking with your solicitor to understand why.

kleapatra

I had exactly this problem. My lease extension completed end of Feb 15 and I sold the property at the end of June and the lease still wasn't registered at Land Registry. My lease solicitor expedited the case with Land reg due to the sale and it was registered within 2 weeks. As it turns out, it wasn't the incompetence of land reg that is holding up the sale/purchase, its now the incompetence of the local council who are taking over 12 weeks to do local searches!