Limited Title Guarantee

changup

Dear forum,
We are currently in process of buying a property and have been presented with the contract and transfer documents. They say "Limited Title Guarantee", is this a problem? What options do we have? Is it advisable to buy a property with Limited Title Guarantee?

TIA.

user1977

What sort of party is the vendor? Pretty normal if it's e.g. executors who are selling. Haven't you asked your solicitor?

ZSC

We are the same, not sure if your property is the same as ours but ours is unregistered at present so we will be first registration after it completes. Our sellers are the executors and have all the original deeds etc which helps. 

ka7e

We had this when buying a house from an elderly lady with limited capacity. The sale was handled by her daughter who had POA, but had no recent knowledge of the house. It just meant there was no current information on a lot of minor details about the house, mainly regarding installations and maintenance. Anything major should be uncovered with due diligence by yourself, your surveyor and solicitor.

changup

Thanks all. The property is on probate and being sold by representatives of deceased owner. 
The follow-on question is, will there be issues in future in selling the property with "Limited Title Guarantee"?
Regards

user1977

changup said:

The follow-on question is, will there be issues in future in selling the property with "Limited Title Guarantee"?

You wouldn't be selling with limited title guarantee, because you (presumably) will have occupied the property for sufficiently long to be able to say, hand on heart, that there aren't e.g. any third parties who have unregistered rights over it. Whereas executors can't be certain about what the deceased might have done.

kasqueak

There won’t be any issues selling in the future as you will have the full title guarantee. 

Limited title guarantee is common with probate properties. I bought one myself last year. It generally means the person selling has limited knowledge of the property and its history. Therefore they may not be able to give you all the facts such as neighbour disputes, when the boiler was last serviced, location of things like the gas meters etc. 

So make sure you get a survey done to satisfy yourself of everything. 

But there will be no issues selling in the future so don’t worry about that. 

changup

Thanks all, I did speak to the solicitor who confirmed the same as all of your above comments.

Maffy52

Hi, I had the same question as I am buying a property from McCarthy & Stone who bought it as a part-exchange. It sounds like there is not a problem.
BUT, I still have a question, for me to sell the property again in the future, how long would I need to live in it, before I could claim to have FULL title on the property? thanks, Maffy.

Hamlet22

If your conveyancer hasn't drawn it to your attention as a problem - like they haven't drawn your attention to each clause in the contract and document line by document line - then great. But great you are reading everything though.

But LTG is only when a sale is by an executor or trust. All quite normal. When you sell, you then sell with full title guarantee, even if you sold after a second of ownership.