Title deeds

chris.p

Probate has been granted on my late mother's estate, I have just found out that her bungalow has not to date been registered with Land Registry, and the solicitor has quoted £800+ to have it put in my name. I am wondering does it need to be registered as it hasn't been been up to now. I am the sole beneficiary and would like to keep the bungalow, which at present is rented out, as an income.

eddyinfreehold

You can easily confirm if your property is registered by checking with the Land Registry. My father died recently and his house had been in the family for three generations before him. My sister now owns it. Luckily my brother had the foresight to register the property with the LR about a decade before dad died. We had access to all the consecutive conveyances between family members going back to about 1880...it is worth keeping some documents!

If you have inherited the property then you are legally obliged to register it with the LR. Have a look here... https://www.gov.uk/registering-land-or-property-with-land-registry

According to my brother it was rather a protracted process to register the house and required a little bit of legal knowledge, an amount of logic and tenacity and a lot of patience. He said that if he was doing it again he would use a solicitor. As you are only doing it once, and part of the solicitor's fee involves the registration fee which is related to the property value, I would advise using a solicitor too. You could shop around I suppose for a better estimate, or ask for a breakdown of the costs including the registration fee you will have pay yourself anyway. Personally £800 represents, probably, less than 1% of the property value and registration is peace of mind in the future, especially if the house is rented out.

Have a read of the Government link above before you do anything. I hope this helps

FreeBear

If you have the original deeds and all the conveyancing documents showing a clear line of ownership from the date the house was built, you could do the first registration yourself. The forms (FR1 & AS1) are not too difficult to complete and the grant of probate will suffice for the ID1 form.


Should you not have access to the deeds, then a solicitor is probably the best option as they will know what documents are required.




P.S. I did a FR & assent myself last year without the aid of a solicitor - Land Registry were helpful and they kindly checked the documents prior to submission when I went to one of their offices.