Buying an Unregistered House

G_M

Clutterfree wrote: »

We were told by our solicitor that if the vendors solicitor did the first registration it takes much longer than if our solicitor does it for us.
No idea why though.

As the LR Rep says, the actual registration takes the same length of time.

The difference is that if it is being done first, then the contract Exchange/Completion will be held up while waiting.

If it is done after, you can Exchange/Complete when you want/are ready, and the registration can be done at leisure after you are the owner.

Clutterfree

G_M wrote: »

As the LR Rep says, the actual registration takes the same length of time.

The difference is that if it is being done first, then the contract Exchange/Completion will be held up while waiting.

If it is done after, you can Exchange/Complete when you want/are ready, and the registration can be done at leisure after you are the owner.

Ah thank you. That makes more sense.

Ithaca

We had this situation last summer. It was a 1960s house owned by the seller (or seller's estate) from new, so had never been sold on and therefore was not registered.

It meant there was a bit more scrutiny needed over the deeds to make sure the registration caught any potential hiccups (unusual covenants, references to missing documents etc), but your solicitor should be checking that anyway.

I think we ended up paying the extra registration fees but we were already getting a good deal on the house so another £100 or so wasn't a huge issue in the grand scheme of things; in fact, I think our solicitor originally suggested we get the vendors to complete the registration process before exchange but we didn't want to add the extra time onto the sale so we said we'd sort it after the sale.

With a 1960s house that had only had one owner it wasn't a particularly complicated registration so that worked for us.

IIRC it took 8-10 weeks for the registration to go through after completion (so not far off the 60 working days quoted above) and our solicitor managed it all for us.

Rain_Shadow

My experience with my mother's house, which we are registering for the sake of convenience later, took months and months and the processing of an adverse possession that it threw up is taking months and months more. 18 months and it still isn't resolved.


Do the registration after completion.

AdrianC

Rain_Shadow wrote: »

My experience with my mother's house
...the processing of an adverse passion that it threw up...

Your mother ran off with the solicitor?

G_M

Originally Posted by Rain Shadow
My experience with my mother's house
...the processing of an adverse passion that it threw up...

AdrianC wrote: »

Your mother ran off with the solicitor?

I think mother must have been love-sick.

brownedge

Experience of an applicant for first registration (my own home for 29 years). After Land Registry's promise to process my application as quickly as possible, I have waited 20 weeks (100 working days) with, so far, no action, despite my letters to them. I am 85 and do not have forever to wait.

Rain_Shadow

I edited my post. I'd have laughed, except, like brownedge, I am completely fed up with the entirely unacceptable sloth of the LR.

brownedge

Yes, Rain Shadow, me too. Their position is: "we are doing our best with the limited numbers of staff available for the unexpectedly increased workload". But it is their job to get on with it!

G_M

Oh come on guys!

1) this is an important process. any errors have huge iplications for you and me. The LR have to carefully check the proof of ownersip prior to registration and in many cases this may be ambiguous and need confirmation. Hence the average timescales. (some will be more straight-forward/quicker, some will require confirmations/slower).


2) like everything in local/central government, the LR has been hit by cuts. If you don't like that, complain to your MP or vote the government out at the next election.

(don't get me started though on the irony of people voting for Brexit to escape the undemocratic imposition of leaders in the EC institutions, and ending up with a brand new Prime Minister here without a vote by the people, or even a vote by the Tory membership!)