Land registry title deed name change

KevLong

Hi,

My Fiance and I are looking to buy a new house, we have got to the end of the process and it’s now been revealed that two brothers own a piece of land directly to the side of our house.

Land registry is pretty unclear if it encroaches into our extension on the house and our extension does not have building regs. We are currently living with mother in law and pets are with friends so time is short but we don’t want to buy the house and get asked by the land owners to take our extension down.

We have approached one of the brothers and he said he will be happy to sell the land for £1, the other brother we have not approached yet. (They had a business that dissolved 12 years ago but they fell out with each other and still own this little stretch of land)

We are currently waiting on Santander to agree to move forward and approve lending us the money but do we really want to move in knowing these risks or do we get the current owner to rectify all this first?

The land is registered so I am sure this is just a change of name on the title deeds, any idea how long this process is? I was told it’s not very long as the land is registered.

[Deleted User]

Surely all these questions should be directed to your solicitor to ensure its done correctly as they will also act for the lender so need to make sure things are correct ?

KevLong

Hi Densol,

Yes you are correct, these questions should be directed to my solicitor however my solicitor doesn’t seem to be very good which is why I’ve placed this post on this forum.

Isn’t this the reason there are forums?

I was hoping someone may be able to give us a little guidance instead of putting all of our trust in our solicitor.

I am very interested in knowing if the brothers can actually do anything detrimental when they own this piece of land and our extension is encroaching on the land?

And how long the process is to change names on title deeds in land registry?

We would rather not wait as we have pets but we don’t want to move in to be told our extension needs to be taken down.

Anyone???

Land_Registry

There are a few things to resolve here and whilst your solicitor does not appear to be very good you are very much in their hands here.

The registered title will show the general boundaries. Generally speaking no plan will give you the exact position of the legal boundary but you should be able to confirm by using the title plan and the reality on the ground, inc existing boundary features, whether the extension has encroached on their land.

It reads though that you believe it does and perhaps more importantly the brothers do too. So if there is an issue over that then it is invariably something you, your solicitor and lender would want resolved before completing on any purchase/mortgage.

I assume that the extension is relatively new so the seller's have not now occupied the neighbours' land for very long. If so and the neighbours are happy to transfer it then they can do that by way of a transfer of part of their existing title.

If that application is submitted then the lodging solicitor can then supply us with evidence to confirm your purchase and ask us to expedite it. Expedition reduces the wait time between receipt and processing to around 2/3 weeks. But that's just the registration process so you still have a few weeks to go before you get to that point it seems

The extension with no regs is a wider issue but worth exploring with the local authority. Often there is a size aspect to such planning requirements but I suspect that may depend on on what type of extension it is, conservatory or two storey extension for example.

Of course if the extension has to come down and the boundary is restored then things change but as presumably that would mean your not going ahead it's probably the first Q to answer.