Property unregistered on Land Registry- who should pay?

sl9192

Hi all,
I'm buying a property with my partner and we had the searches back only to find the property wasn't previously registered by previous owner on LR. Now instead of the standard registry transfer fee, were being charged and extra £100+vat by our solicitor and the LR fee has doubled to £190 instead of £95. Please correct me if I am wrong but why do we now have to pay, as the previous owner failed to register the property? Can these costs be recovered from their side. Obviously the amount is not LOADS extra but to me it's the principle of it!

Also, the house has been modified with a garage build, front and back porch and single storey extension. Planning permission for all of these items are missing and NatWest won't release funds without them. We are being told to go to the council ourselves and pay for certificates of planning permission- again- why is this our cost?? Surely it's the sellers responsibility?

Any help appreciated!

Clutterfree

With regards to registering land, we bought a property last year that was unregistered. As we were the buyers, we had to pay for it, I'm pretty sure that is usual practice.

The previous owner probably bought it when it wasn't compulsory to register it so it's not that they failed to, it most likely wasn't necessary back then.

stator

I'm afraid you have to decide whether you want to pay these extra costs or if you want to renegotiate the price of the house. As long as you haven't exchanged contracts yet then it's all up for negotiation.

regarding the extensions, have you discussed an indemnity policy with your solicitor? It would be cheaper than obtaaining retrospecitve planning permission and building control sign off.

G_M

Do you want to register your ownership with the Land Registry? (clue - you have no choice!). Then you'll have to pay to do so.

When did the current owner take ownership? If (as is likely) it was before compulory registration was inroduced in that part of the country, he had no obligation to register.

Likewise - when was the garage built?

Ithaca

When we bought our current house it had never been registered - one owner from new and was built when there was no requirement to register. We paid for the increased registration fee and our solicitor managed the registration process as part of their overall conveyancing package for the sale (so no extra costs from the lawyers). Think it took about 8 weeks following completion for the registration to be confirmed.

It cost us an extra 0.02% of the purchase cost so it didn't even factor in the top 10 things we were worrying about.

The missing buliding regs is a different discussion and is probably where you should focus your attention, as that has potential to scupper your purchase.

LdnFtB

I'm buying a flat which was previously registered incorrectly - we're making the vendor pay for rectifying the deed as it's their mistake.

How adverse are you to putting your foot down and saying that your purchase depends on the property being registered?

Ithaca

The other issue is timing... our solicitor originally suggested we ask our vendors to register the property, but that would have added 8 weeks onto the purchase timescale. I was happy to spend an extra £100 to get the sale pushed through without the extra couple of months delay.

Mojisola

LdnFtB wrote: »

How adverse are you to putting your foot down and saying that your purchase depends on the property being registered?

Ithaca wrote: »

The other issue is timing... our solicitor originally suggested we ask our vendors to register the property, but that would have added 8 weeks onto the purchase timescale. I was happy to spend an extra £100 to get the sale pushed through without the extra couple of months delay.

It's a waste of time to make the sellers register the property in their names.

davilown

They've already registered the property in the form of the paper deeds - when purchasing you have to change the deeds and pay for just now its electronic

G_M

davilown wrote: »

They've already registered the property in the form of the paper deeds - when purchasing you have to change the deeds and pay for just now its electronic

????????????????

:huh:

konark

davilown wrote: »

They've already registered the property in the form of the paper deeds - when purchasing you have to change the deeds and pay for just now its electronic

They've given their paper deeds to their solicitor who is checking their veracity. When you register it the papers will no longer be valid as you will have a printout of the LR entry, the person who first registers it pays the fee and your solicitors will have more work checking and preparing the deeds.

Unregistered property is still not rare despite some areas having mandatory registration since the 1960s.