Property sale with a Rentcharge on Title that we can't obtain a Rentcharge Redemption Certificate

DMilly666

We are in the process of selling our house and our buyers solicitor has raised the issue that there appears to be a Rentcharge on our freehold property title and they want us to obtain a Rentcharge Redemption Certificate which they can then submit to HM Land Registry to have removed on completion of the sale. We knew nothing about this issue until now we have come to sell and we have never been asked to pay any Rentcharge monies since we have lived here. This Rentcharge was never raised by the conveyancer  when we bought the house back in 2012 (unhelpfully the conveyancer was shut down in 2013 by the legal regulator).

We have looked through the paperwork we were given by our conveyancer  when we bought the house and there is a copy of a receipt showing the Rentcharge was privately redeemed with the Rentcharge owner by a previous owner of the house in 2002, and as the Rentcharge has already been privately redeemed, we have been told by the government department that would deal with redeeming Rentcharges and subsequently issue a Redemption Certificate that they can't deal with it and therefore cannot issue said certificate. 

Is there any other form of documentation that HM Land Registry would definitely accept to have the Rentcharge removed from the property tile other than the formal Rencharge Redemption Certificate? I have managed to track down the Rentcharge owner who lives not too far from me and I have made contact and they are willing to cooperate in doing anything we need to get this sorted.

DMilly666

In addition, I have attempted to contact HM Land Registry directly but the initial response from them was to consult one of their guidance documents which states a Rentcharge Redemption Certificate should be submitted with the AP1 form to get it removed from the property Title, but this is obviously something we cannot obtain. I have again contacted them to ask what they would accept in the absence of the Certificate, but I have yet to receive a response, so posted this thread to see if anyone had experience of this issue and what was done about it. 

AvenueLane

Hi DMilly666. I am in a similar situation (but the buyer of the property in question)! We and the sellers desperately want to move forward but are struggling with lenders. Did you manage to resolve your problem? Any advice or just your story would be welcome!

princeofpounds

I see this is a post from a few months back and it's a shame it didn't receive a reply at the time. I suspect it is solved now, but...

If you have clear evidence that the rentcharge has been redeemed then I would expect that is all the land registry will need. Their guidance might state the formal certificate, but that is not the only way to achieve redemption, just the usual one.

There is a very helpful land registry rep on the board here who will answer questions - they may find this thread, or you can search for them using the forum search. They are quite active so it's easy to find them.

DMilly666

AvenueLane said:

Hi DMilly666. I am in a similar situation (but the buyer of the property in question)! We and the sellers desperately want to move forward but are struggling with lenders. Did you manage to resolve your problem? Any advice or just your story would be welcome!

Hi Avenue Lane, and sorry to hear you are in a similar situation that we found ourselves in, not going to lie, it's been a bit of a nightmare. We did manage to get this issue sorted but it took a good bit of work on our part to get this issue resolved. To cut a long story short, I managed to find out using a freebie 'find my family tree' website that the actual rentcharge owner was still alive and that she lived about 30mins drive from where we live, so I managed to make contact with her and she provided us with a signed letter stating that the rentcharge had been redeemed many years ago by a previous owner of the house back in 2002 and that in her view the rentcharge had been redeemed and was no longer applicable. Our Conveyancer then submitted an application to HM Land Registry (HMLR) with a copy of this this letter along with a copy of the private redemption receipt dated 2002 which we were given by our Solicitor when we bought the house in 2012 which indicated that a previous owner of the property had privately redeemed the rentcharge back in 2002. HMLR then reviewed the application and accepted the documentation that had been submitted and removed the rentcharge from our property title.

To be honest it was a very long shot that we could find the original rentcharge owner and that she would still be alive and be willing to provide us with a signed letter, but luckily we did manage to get that from her and undoubtedly went some way to help our application with HMLR. We could of course have just submitted the application to HMLR with only the 2002 dated receipt we were given a copy of by our solicitor when we bought the house as evidence, and they may have accepted that alone, but our buyer's solicitor basically indicated they didn't think HMLR would accept this evidence alone, so that's why we went to the efforts of trying to get something from the actual rentcharge owner. I also contacted HMLR directly when all we had was the 2002 dated receipt and asked if that evidence would be acceptable to get the rentcharge removed, and although they have been very helpful throughout the whole process, they said they couldn't indicate either way if that alone would be sufficient, and we would need to submit the formal application with any evidence, then they would review it and let us know if it was acceptable or not.

If you have any evidence at all that the rentcharge has been redeemed/removed, and unless you are in the fortunate position where you can get something from the original rentcharge owner like we did,  than I would suggest getting your Solicitor/Conveyancer to submit the application to HMLR along with any evidence asap, but if time is of the essence and it is potentially posing an issue that could force the collapse of a sale/purchase, then make sure, like we did, that your Solicitor/Conveyancer follows up the submission with a specific request to HMLR for the application be expedited so it will get reviewed within 10 working days, otherwise it will sit in the normal pile that won't get looked at for potentially 6-8 weeks.

If you have no evidence the rentcharge has ever been redeemed/extinguished and you have no way of obtaining anything directly from the rentcharge owner now,  then there is a 'Rentcharges Team' as part of the government Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government who formally deal with applications to redeem rentcharges, but they only deal with cases where a rentcharge has not already been redeemed privately (e.g. by a previous owner directly with the rentcharge owner as was the case with our situation, so we wouldn't have been able to use this route) so you could make an application through them and if successful they will issue a formal 'Rentcharge Redemption Certificate' that HMLR will definitely accept along with an application..... However, this process is likely to take MANY MONTHS (e.g. we were told this could take 3-4 months) rather than a few weeks, so not useful if you are time bound.
Thanks
  

GDB2222

@Land_Registry Hopefully, the LR official rep will see this thread and be able to comment.

princeofpounds

Dmilly, great job to notice the bump and come back with such a detailed reply, given that you didn't get a reply yourself at the time. Sometimes threads just drop off the first page or two so quickly and get missed.