Possessory title

Tiglet2

Wendysharp44 said:

Thank you all for your comments. I appreciate your time.

can I presume therefore that when solicitors do their searches via the land registry they would not necessarily identify how many titles a property has registered and also when the seller completes the TR6 especially point 1.1 to 1.3 they don’t have to advise that there is a possessory title attached to the property ? I was led to believe that the whole point of appointing them was to eradicate troubles like this occurring. . A safety net for the layman. 

 I totally understand what you are saying about the title plan it is important and I recall when I purchased mine, my solicitor had me in to the office and showed me the boundaries in red and asked questions regarding a bit of land at the side, as to whether it was in the sale as he wasn’t going to view the property! Perhaps it just comes down to diligence.

We certainly don’t want any further bother than necessary, I guess the suggestion to try speak again with the vendors and get the id1 sorted and off to the land Reg to join the signed tr1, get an ind pol sorted and put the rest down to a bad experience and hope the possessory title doesn’t cause problems for future sale.

When the solicitor downloads the title from the Land Registry, they would search for the address.  If the address comes up with two titles, then they would obtain both.  The difficulty is when the searched address only shows one title, because the land/driveway is on a completely different title number and is not related to that address.  For instance the Land Registry might show 16 North Road as one title, but there could be another title which is something like Land adjacent to 18 North Road.  The solicitor wouldn't know that this land was owned by number 16, unless the purchaser had said that the title plan for number 16 was wrong, that there should have been an extra parcel of land.

When your partner purchased the property, the titles would have been obtained and sent by the seller's solicitor.  So what the seller's solicitor sent your partner's solicitor was what was being sold.  There is no reason for your partner's solicitor to have queried what the seller's solicitor sent, unless he noticed the discrepancy and raised a query.

The seller would have answered the TR6 1.1 to 1.3 according to what boundaries they either maintained or owned.  But it sounds as though what they answered related to the boundaries that they were selling, which may be the boundaries with or without the driveway, but if your partner's solicitor understood that the title plan matched what was being bought, how could the solicitor query it?  This is nothing to do with possessory title.  The possessory title is shown on the Register of Title at B: Proprietorship Register.  Most say Title Absolute.

I think talking to the vendors is probably the best way of solving this issue as it is clear they intended to sell it.

princeofpounds

Wendysharp44 said:

can I presume therefore that when solicitors do their searches via the land registry they would not necessarily identify how many titles a property has registered and also when the seller completes the TR6 especially point 1.1 to 1.3 they don’t have to advise that there is a possessory title attached to the property ? I was led to believe that the whole point of appointing them was to eradicate troubles like this occurring. . A safety net for the layman. 

A property only ever has one title attached to it. The problem here is that what you thought was 'the' property was covered by two titles. 'Property 123' and 'Land adjacent to Property 123'. If you tell the solicitor you are buying 'Property 123' they will get the title plan for that and ask you to check that's what you are buying. They don't know you are buying 'Land adjacent...' unless they are told, or they realise there is a problem when looking at the plans for some reason. For all they know, the land at the front part of the driveway is, for example, highways land.

Now that doesn't mean they can be wilfully blind in all situations. That's why I recommended trying the legal ombudsman/SRA as a last resort. They may take the view that the solicitor did not exercise sufficient diligence in examining access, but that would depend on the specific facts of the case.

As for the possessory title issue - yes, they would need to disclose it and they should discuss it with their client. But it's not the issue here. And in fact, if they did not know about the 'Land adjacent...', they wouldn't have known about the possessory title on it anyway!

It is potentially possible that you could nobble the seller for not being more explicit about this situation in the TR6. I'm sure that some of the answers that they gave would only make sense if they meant to include the other title, and would be untruths if they didn't (e.g. utilities crossing neighbouring land). The problem with 1.1-1.3 though is that they only relate to the title that being sold. It would be best to work the the seller to get them to finish off what they started, but you could consider threatening them with legal action (you would just need to be prepared to see it through if necessary).