Nightmare selling my house due to lease being in old owners name

damianwilshaw2006

As the title suggests I'm having a nightmare selling my house. Mine and my wifes house is freehold and we are registered title absolute but the old owners who are now deceased ( we bought from the son/daughter 4 years ago ) are the names on the lease for the property. 

Our conveyancer says that the property isn't registered with the land registry and because we don't have the deed we can't get  it registered in order to get it transfered into our name and because it's not registered with the land registry.

We've asked the daughter who we bought the house from if she has the deeds for our house and she said that the solicitor she used had them but as it's the weekend we'll have to wait until Monday to ask them but i would like to know if firstly would they still have them now that the sale has past 4 years on and if not where could they have sent them? But more importantly WHY DIDN'T OUR SOLICITOR PICK UP ON IT IN THE 1ST PLACE? 😆 👊

Has anyone else ever had to deal with this and if so how did u get to the bottom of it?

macman

How can you have bought it only 4 years ago and it's not registered? Land registration has been compulsory in the whole of England since 1990. Are you outside England?

damianwilshaw2006

No I'm in england and the house was built in 1965 so the previous owner was given a 200 year lease on the property in 1965 but then bought the freehold in 1979 so when we bought it in 2016 our solicitor applied for change of name to the freehold they didn't for the lease on the property and my current solicitor just can't seem to get it through to our previous solicitor that they shod have picked up on it. As for the lack of the property being registered, the property was built in 1965 which is before it became compulsory to register with the land registry so i can only assume it wasn't done due to cost but this is why we need the deeds so we can register then transfer the name into ours.

Thanks for the reply too 

MovingForwards

Solicitors should hold the file for 6 years, normally held off-site in secure storage.

We can take guesses as to why it wasn't picked up when you purchased, doesn't mean any of us it would right.

At a guess your solicitor wasn't told there was a leasehold title, only told about the freehold side. 

Don't annoy the daughter as she may be needed to get something together to help create a possessory title registration with the @Land_Registry

davidmcn

damianwilshaw2006 said:

my current solicitor just can't seem to get it through to our previous solicitor that they shod have picked up on it.

You've got a solicitor and they're trying to sort it out. I doubt any of us can add much to it, I would just let them get on with it.

damianwilshaw2006

MovingForwards said:

Solicitors should hold the file for 6 years, normally held off-site in secure storage.

We can take guesses as to why it wasn't picked up when you purchased, doesn't mean any of us it would right.

At a guess your solicitor wasn't told there was a leasehold title, only told about the freehold side. 

Don't annoy the daughter as she may be needed to get something together to help create a possessory title registration with the @Land_Registry

Lol it's ok she's a friend so we asked if she still had the deed and she said it was left with her solicitor and she said i hope that helps so we're cool 😎 😂

princeofpounds

OK, so if I understand correctly:
- The previous owners of your property held a freehold title to your property and, underneath that, a leasehold title. The background to this structure doesn't really matter.
- These two titles were not merged into one another (nothing unusual in that) and both were unregistered as neither title had transacted after registration had become compulsory.
- You bought both titles, but it now turns out that your conveyancer at the time only registered the freehold title. 
- The leasehold title remains unregistered and this is of course holding up your sale.

First thing - yes, if you bought four years ago, it is very possible that between your old conveyancer and the previous owner's conveyancer have the necessary documents. They may be in archive so they may not appear Monday morning! It's hard to say who would have the document - the vendor's conveyancer should have sent it to yours I think, but one potential reason for the original mistake is that not happening. That's not an excuse; they should have known it was needed - it must be mentioned somewhere otherwise how would the new buyer know about it?

Second thing - yes, your old conveyancer made a serious mistake by not noticing this. It's a pretty fundamental thing, but in some way an easy oversight also. Sometimes this does happen - I can recall similar question on the board in the past - but I'm shocked they don't seem to understand why it's a problem.

If they can locate the lease document, this will be very easy to solve but will take a little bit of time. Your old conveyancer should just register the lease for you. You can ask them to expedite it - they really should as it's their mistake. They can ask the land registry to expedite it too, if there is a transaction hanging on this.

If they can't locate the document, that's more problematic. But I think that's a less likely scenario at the moment. In this situation, there are some ways forward.

For example, I think you could very realistically claim that the lease has been extinguished by adverse possession by the previous owners, and there is no prospect of a surprise leaseholder popping up to claim their tenure. A statement of truth from the previous owners daughter (presumably in her capacity of executor and/or owner prior to sale) would help here. That could enable your solicitor to register possessory leasehold title, and the new buyer could upgrade that to absolute title when enough time has elapsed. You would also have to offer indemnity insurance. That would probably be acceptable to most buyers (And importantly their solicitors!) but the risk is that it spooks them a bit.

But with luck you won't need that sort of thing.

damianwilshaw2006

davidmcn said:

damianwilshaw2006 said:

my current solicitor just can't seem to get it through to our previous solicitor that they shod have picked up on it.

You've got a solicitor and they're trying to sort it out. I doubt any of us can add much to it, I would just let them get on with it.

Yeah i know but it could take months to sort and the post was just a long winded way of asking if anyone else had suffered the same fate lol

Our solicitor has said it doesn't mean we can't sell the house but some solicitors may kick up a fuss that's all.

damianwilshaw2006

princeofpounds said:

OK, so if I understand correctly:
- The previous owners of your property held a freehold title to your property and, underneath that, a leasehold title. The background to this structure doesn't really matter.
- These two titles were not merged into one another (nothing unusual in that) and both were unregistered as neither title had transacted after registration had become compulsory.
- You bought both titles, but it now turns out that your conveyancer at the time only registered the freehold title. 
- The leasehold title remains unregistered and this is of course holding up your sale.

First thing - yes, if you bought four years ago, it is very possible that between your old conveyancer and the previous owner's conveyancer have the necessary documents. They may be in archive so they may not appear Monday morning! It's hard to say who would have the document - the vendor's conveyancer should have sent it to yours I think, but one potential reason for the original mistake is that not happening. That's not an excuse; they should have known it was needed - it must be mentioned somewhere otherwise how would the new buyer know about it?

Second thing - yes, your old conveyancer made a serious mistake by not noticing this. It's a pretty fundamental thing, but in some way an easy oversight also. Sometimes this does happen - I can recall similar question on the board in the past - but I'm shocked they don't seem to understand why it's a problem.

If they can locate the lease document, this will be very easy to solve but will take a little bit of time. Your old conveyancer should just register the lease for you. You can ask them to expedite it - they really should as it's their mistake. They can ask the land registry to expedite it too, if there is a transaction hanging on this.

If they can't locate the document, that's more problematic. But I think that's a less likely scenario at the moment. In this situation, there are some ways forward.

For example, I think you could very realistically claim that the lease has been extinguished by adverse possession by the previous owners, and there is no prospect of a surprise leaseholder popping up to claim their tenure. A statement of truth from the previous owners daughter (presumably in her capacity of executor and/or owner prior to sale) would help here. That could enable your solicitor to register possessory leasehold title, and the new buyer could upgrade that to absolute title when enough time has elapsed. You would also have to offer indemnity insurance. That would probably be acceptable to most buyers (And importantly their solicitors!) but the risk is that it spooks them a bit.

But with luck you won't need that sort of thing.

Thanks so much for the reply. I'm sure that my current conveyancer is aware of the ways round it and she has asked again for all need documents and if it still doesn't work then she will ask to speak to one of the partners of the firm im sure because it's quite a big firm i think but i will let her know good sir and thanks again 👍🏻

AdrianC

damianwilshaw2006 said:

As for the lack of the property being registered, the property was built in 1965 which is before it became compulsory to register with the land registry so i can only assume it wasn't done due to cost but this is why we need the deeds so we can register then transfer the name into ours.

That's why it wasn't registered by the previous owners.
It was, however, a legal requirement that it was registered on your purchase four years ago...

It doesn't matter who did it - the vendor or the purchaser - but it should have been registered then. And that would have brought this up at the time. Your solicitor at the time dropped a very big fat furry one.

If I were your buyer now, I'd be standing well back from this until you get it sorted out. If you couldn't give some kind of categorical reassurance in the very short term, I'd be thinking seriously of pulling out, especially if there was a chain hanging on this.

damianwilshaw2006

AdrianC said:

damianwilshaw2006 said:

As for the lack of the property being registered, the property was built in 1965 which is before it became compulsory to register with the land registry so i can only assume it wasn't done due to cost but this is why we need the deeds so we can register then transfer the name into ours.

That's why it wasn't registered by the previous owners.
It was, however, a legal requirement that it was registered on your purchase four years ago...

It doesn't matter who did it - the vendor or the purchaser - but it should have been registered then. And that would have brought this up at the time. Your solicitor at the time dropped a very big fat furry one.

If I were your buyer now, I'd be standing well back from this until you get it sorted out. If you couldn't give some kind of categorical reassurance in the very short term, I'd be thinking seriously of pulling out, especially if there was a chain hanging on this.

I know that's why we need to find the deeds but even if not, the previous owner will sign whatever we need to rectify as she's a friend and has already given us a little help in telling us that the deeds to her parents homes (because they had more than 1) were with their solicitor when her daughter sold their homes.