No deeds for house we are trying to buy

Newhouse87

Hi there, I am new to this so please bear with me! 

We put an offer in on our first house and had it accepted the week before the lockdown started. Since then it’s been a SLOW process. Our solicitors raised their enquiries which included the fact they did not receive the epitome of title or the root of title (the seller inherited it from their spouse who passed away). It’s been two weeks since that and our solicitors said they hadn’t heard anything so I called the estate agent who said the deeds had never been located and this is a known long standing problem. The seller had originally provided a deed of indemnity from a court case with the builders in the early 60s but that’s it and our solicitors have said that means nothing. The house is unregistered as it was built in the early 50s and the couple lived there their whole lives.

So here any my questions:

Is it poor that our solicitors were not aware of the missing deeds?

can we still buy the house?

whats the process now?

how long should we expect the process to take? 

Should we hold off on our survey and any further searches?

Thanks in advance 

vitaweat

To be clear, there are two different things:

1. Holding the deeds to a property
2. The property being registered with the Land Registry

#1 is effectively a souvenir these days, #2 shows ownership.

If the property is registered then ownership can be transferred.  This blog piece goes into a little more detail:

https://hmlandregistry.blog.gov.uk/2018/02/19/title-deeds/

Newhouse87

said:

To be clear, there are two different things:

1. Holding the deeds to a property
2. The property being registered with the Land Registry

#1 is effectively a souvenir these days, #2 shows ownership.

If the property is registered then ownership can be transferred.  This blog piece goes into 

Thank you - it’s An unregistered property as it was built and bought before any of this came into being. 

princeofpounds

Newhouse87 said:

So here any my questions:

Is it poor that our solicitors were not aware of the missing deeds?

can we still buy the house?

whats the process now?

how long should we expect the process to take? 

Should we hold off on our survey and any further searches?

Thanks in advance 

Hi there. Unregistered land without deeds isn’t unheard of, but it does introduce a bunch of complexity.

I don’t see what you are blaming your solicitors for here - as it’s unregistered all they know about the title will come from the vendors’ solicitor. There is no other source of information.

For the house to be saleable, it does need to be registered. That requires a first registration process with the land registry. That is not too complicated, if they have the deeds.

But they don’t. So then they are looking at a process called reconstitution of title. I don’t know much about it but google can probably tell you lots, e.g. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-registration-of-title-where-deeds-have-been-lost-or-destroyed

I do know that there are certain legal issues around this kind of title. It is theoretically open to challenge, and unknown obligations can pop up later. So indemnity is not just an academic discussion here, even though there is no particular reason to suspect the integrity of the title being claimed.

But this is all for your vendors to sort out. I don’t understand why they haven’t done it before marketing to be honest, unless I’m missing something. I wouldn’t be keen about spending for a survey with no real assurance they are going to do the necessary work or make the title saleable.

vitaweat

Newhouse87 said:

said:

To be clear, there are two different things:

1. Holding the deeds to a property
2. The property being registered with the Land Registry

#1 is effectively a souvenir these days, #2 shows ownership.

If the property is registered then ownership can be transferred.  This blog piece goes into 

Thank you - it’s An unregistered property as it was built and bought before any of this came into being. 

You can still buy the property but it will cost a little more and be a PITA as the Land Registry will want to know why the place is unregistered and why there are no deeds.

Personally, if I was to go ahead I'd want a substantial discount to reflect the extra risk (small) and hassle (huge) involved.  Whether you feel the same way or not is up to you.

greatcrested

vitaweat said:

To be clear, there are two different things:
1. Holding the deeds to a property
2. The property being registered with the Land Registry

#1 is effectively a souvenir these days, #2 shows ownership.

If the property is registered then ownership can be transferred.  This blog piece goes into a little more detail:

https://hmlandregistry.blog.gov.uk/2018/02/19/title-deeds/

OP said quite clearly that "The house is unregistered as it was built in the early 50s and the couple lived there their whole lives."

You can still buy the property but it will cost a little more and be a PITA as the Land Registry will want to know why the place is unregistered and why there are no deeds.

LR won't care why it's unregistered. Thousands of properties are unregistered. They also won't care why there are no deeds - they'll simply deal with the 1st registration application according to their process for unregistered propertes with missing deeds!

As for your quesions OP:
Is it poor that our solicitors were not aware of the missing deeds? No. They had no way of knowing till they started to investigate the title. That's their job and that's why you are paying them.

But it is poor that the seller did not tell the estate agent so that the EA could have highlighted this to you up-front.
can we still buy the house? Yes - but there are risks. 1) The seller might not own the house. At some point in the future, someone might appear with deeds proving that they own! Unlikely, but possible. You can get insurance against this, but that will cover your costs/losses - it won't help you keep the house. 2) you might find there are covenants on the property eg prohibitting you from extending, or selling alcohol (yes - I'm not allowed to from my house!), or making you pay to upkeep the village green.Since you have no deeds or documents, you have no way of knowing. Again, insurance can protect against the costs, but the covenants can still be enforced (by whoever..)

whats the process now?  Follow your solicitor's advice, but if it were me a) insist the seller registers the property before you Exchange and b) take a view about the risks,against  how much you want the property
how long should we expect the process to take?  Piece of string.

Should we hold off on our survey and any further searches? My advice again - yes.

vitaweat

greatcrested said:

vitaweat said:

To be clear, there are two different things:
1. Holding the deeds to a property
2. The property being registered with the Land Registry

#1 is effectively a souvenir these days, #2 shows ownership.

If the property is registered then ownership can be transferred.  This blog piece goes into a little more detail:

https://hmlandregistry.blog.gov.uk/2018/02/19/title-deeds/

OP said quite clearly that "The house is unregistered as it was built in the early 50s and the couple lived there their whole lives."

You can still buy the property but it will cost a little more and be a PITA as the Land Registry will want to know why the place is unregistered and why there are no deeds.

LR won't care why it's unregistered. Thousands of properties are unregistered. They also won't care why there are no deeds - they'll simply deal with the 1st registration application according to their process for unregistered propertes with missing deeds!

As for your quesions OP:
Is it poor that our solicitors were not aware of the missing deeds? No. They had no way of knowing till they started to investigate the title. That's their job and that's why you are paying them.

But it is poor that the seller did not tell the estate agent so that the EA could have highlighted this to you up-front.
can we still buy the house? Yes - but there are risks. 1) The seller might not own the house. At some point in the future, someone might appear with deeds proving that they own! Unlikely, but possible. You can get insurance against this, but that will cover your costs/losses - it won't help you keep the house. 2) you might find there are covenants on the property eg prohibitting you from extending, or selling alcohol (yes - I'm not allowed to from my house!), or making you pay to upkeep the village green.Since you have no deeds or documents, you have no way of knowing. Again, insurance can protect against the costs, but the covenants can still be enforced (by whoever..)

whats the process now?  Follow your solicitor's advice, but if it were me a) insist the seller registers the property before you Exchange and b) take a view about the risks,against  how much you want the property
how long should we expect the process to take?  Piece of string.

Should we hold off on our survey and any further searches? My advice again - yes.

The LR doesn't agree with you.

Mickey666

Before 1998 (I think) there was no legal requirement to register property at Land Registry so there are thousands of unregistered properties out there and it will be inevitable that the deeds to some of those properties will have been lost, so there are ways to deal with such a circumstance.  The solicitor should know what to do - if they don't then you're using the wrong solicitor!

A friend inherited her parent's house only to discover that the deeds were nowhere to be found.  He could prove his parents had lived in the house for many decades so armed with a whole bunch of supporting documents plus a 'statement of truth' (or something similar) he made a first registration of the property and was granted a 'Possessory Title' rather than a 'Title Absolute'.  In theory a possessory title allows anyone who can provide better evidence that they are the rightful owner to become the legal owners, after due process, for a period (I think) of 12 years.  After that, a possessory title can be converted into a title absolute.

Having duly registered the house he was then able to sell it, together with some sort of indemnity insurance to protect the buyer just in case someone else came along within 12 years with a valid claim.  Obviously, he knew there could be no such claim but potential buyers did not, hence the indemnity insurance.

He was worried about the whole thing initially but it all turned out to be fairly straightforward.  Lost deeds are not uncommon, which is why it was made a legal requirement in 1998 (or thereabouts I think) for all property transfers to be duly registered at Land Registry, thus gradually reducing the numbers of unregistered properties over time.  Once registered, the physical deeds are no longer required, though they may be of historical interest.

in_my_wellies

I bought an unregistered house with no deeds.
It took 17 weeks for the LR to sort out the paperwork and all was well in the end. Plus the time for the normal conveyancing 
Very briefly, it was a semi so the joining neighbour was contacted. Her house was also unregistered but they were able to look at her deeds to check for covenants and the grandson of the builder still lived in the village and was able to go through his records re the purchase of the land in 1910.  
So we had title and moved in
The original deeds were found under the floor when we rewired. And we couldn't keep pigs in the kitchen but we could keep hens. 
Good luck OP

AdrianC

It's not an uncommon situation at all. People who lived in the same house from the 1950s to today tend to be of a certain demographic, with all that implies about the reasons for sale... Paperwork, no matter how important, gets lost or damaged over that time - especially in the upheaval surrounding the very elderly moving not through choice. Perhaps the deeds are somewhere, they just haven't been found... yet.

But the LR have definite processes. In a case like this, it's going to be relatively straightforward simply because of the ease of tracing past ownership. If they didn't have ways out of it, then what would the alternative be? Abandon the property to become a folly sliding into ruin...?

martindow

vitaweat said:

greatcrested said:

vitaweat said:

To be clear, there are two different things:
1. Holding the deeds to a property
2. The property being registered with the Land Registry

#1 is effectively a souvenir these days, #2 shows ownership.

If the property is registered then ownership can be transferred.  This blog piece goes into a little more detail:

https://hmlandregistry.blog.gov.uk/2018/02/19/title-deeds/

OP said quite clearly that "The house is unregistered as it was built in the early 50s and the couple lived there their whole lives."

You can still buy the property but it will cost a little more and be a PITA as the Land Registry will want to know why the place is unregistered and why there are no deeds.

LR won't care why it's unregistered. Thousands of properties are unregistered. They also won't care why there are no deeds - they'll simply deal with the 1st registration application according to their process for unregistered propertes with missing deeds!

As for your quesions OP:
Is it poor that our solicitors were not aware of the missing deeds? No. They had no way of knowing till they started to investigate the title. That's their job and that's why you are paying them.

But it is poor that the seller did not tell the estate agent so that the EA could have highlighted this to you up-front.
can we still buy the house? Yes - but there are risks. 1) The seller might not own the house. At some point in the future, someone might appear with deeds proving that they own! Unlikely, but possible. You can get insurance against this, but that will cover your costs/losses - it won't help you keep the house. 2) you might find there are covenants on the property eg prohibitting you from extending, or selling alcohol (yes - I'm not allowed to from my house!), or making you pay to upkeep the village green.Since you have no deeds or documents, you have no way of knowing. Again, insurance can protect against the costs, but the covenants can still be enforced (by whoever..)

whats the process now?  Follow your solicitor's advice, but if it were me a) insist the seller registers the property before you Exchange and b) take a view about the risks,against  how much you want the property
how long should we expect the process to take?  Piece of string.

Should we hold off on our survey and any further searches? My advice again - yes.

The LR doesn't agree with you.

Can you send us a link to where the LR says that?