Land registry issue!

coot77

My father passed away earlier this year. We are going through the probate/administration process using a 'national' companies legal services. My father purchased a house in 1973 at which he still lived in at the time of his passing. Originally the house had a lease arrangement under which Ground rent was paid on a monthly basis. In late 2012 he went about purchasing the freehold for the property from the Lessors. This was sucessfully completed in 2013 and we have most if not all correspondence for the exercise. This co-incided with a remortage on the property so many solicitors were involved.

Now we are trying to sell the property and our conveyancing solicitor has noted an 'unregistered' lease on the property title from the Land Registry. My father is listed as the proprietor under the title absolute. The schedule of leases details the original lease with start date and term but no plan reference or entry in lessee title.

We can't find record of the actual original lease or title deeds. We have proof of the freehold purchase in several letters.

We are not sure why the lease has been included in the register after the freehold was purchased and more over how it can be removed. Failing that could an indemnity policy be put in place to cover any continuing lease terms which may be or become relevant.

Hope this makes sense, I've lost faith in my conveyancing team as they don't seem to know what to do! They've message land registry but not a great email or applied for anything.

Slithery

Just because your father bought the freehold doesn't mean that the lease he owned disappeared.

He then owned two things, the lease and the freehold.

AdrianC

Slithery said:

Just because your father bought the freehold doesn't mean that the lease he owned disappeared.

He then owned two things, the lease and the freehold.

...except the ownership of the freehold can be proven, but since ownership of the lease was never registered with LR it will still be on paper deeds somewhere...

Of course, without finding those deeds, there's nothing to say that HE owned the lease, rather than having sold it on but retained the freehold...

coot77

That's what it looks like, what is a way round this, we a mid sale! We know who previous lease holder was, the solicitors etc but no
evidence of who lease belongs too.

coot77

I can post an edited pic of land registry (details removed, the problem section c remains unchanged)

AdrianC

coot77 said:

I can post an edited pic of land registry (details removed, the problem section c remains unchanged)

Umm, you can't...

AIUI:
The Land Registry have the freehold registered. That's fine.
They do not have the lease registered. That's your problem...
You can't post an edit of the LR entry for the lease, because it's not registered.

You need to find the deeds for that lease.

You can't extinguish the lease, as freeholder, because there's zero proof the leaseholder agrees...

coot77

I understand what you are say. It makes sense. What I don't follow is this; the Solicitors involved in the freehold purchase had the title deeds at the time (they are referred to in the correspondence several times) why if there were no terms in the lease that would affect the property under freehold ownership would the lease have been entered into the land registry title ? Would the original title deed have maybe not contained the lease but just the freehold? I think that whatever the cause my father should have had this explained to him properly at the time. The records and document copies have been destroyed by all parties we can find as the purchase of freehold took place 9 years ago. Thank you for your help with this.

Hebblethwaite

There was a similar issue with the property that I am (hopefully) buying. I'm not entirely sure what the vendor's solicitors did to sort it out, but it took about three weeks after my solicitors pushed them on it (after I was the one who noticed the draft contracts hadn't been sent for two months after the sale was agreed...) for it all to get sorted out. So, please don't despair!

Land_Registry

coot77 said:

I understand what you are say. It makes sense. What I don't follow is this; the Solicitors involved in the freehold purchase had the title deeds at the time (they are referred to in the correspondence several times) why if there were no terms in the lease that would affect the property under freehold ownership would the lease have been entered into the land registry title ? Would the original title deed have maybe not contained the lease but just the freehold? I think that whatever the cause my father should have had this explained to him properly at the time. The records and document copies have been destroyed by all parties we can find as the purchase of freehold took place 9 years ago. Thank you for your help with this.

Leases can be determined and as such brought to an end. 

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/leases-determination

However that doesn’t happen automatically and an application has to be made to achieve that. 

It reads as if your Father owned a lease granted before compulsory registration was applied to the area. 

He then bought the freehold, which had to be registered. Details of the lease were submitted at that time so a note made on the freehold title as a result. 

That implies, if that’s what happened, that nobody applied to determine the lease for example merge it into the freehold as he owned both. 

And it probably helps as if the lease has been sold since then that should have triggered it’s registration also. 

It might be worth checking what was submitted on registration of the freehold and whether it was a first registration (deeds/docs submitted but returned) or a sale of part of a larger freehold (so the lease was already noted but not registered in own right). 

https://help.landregistry.gov.uk/app/contactus_general

It reads as if you need to try and establish what happened re the lease in order to ascertain whether you can get it cancelled or if not the indemnity policy option can be considered.

Word of caution though re digging too deep as that may make it harder to get any indemnity. So do speak to your solicitor first 

coot77

The house wasn't on land registry when dad applied for freehold, so both were put on at same time.

Land_Registry

coot77 said:

The house wasn't on land registry when dad applied for freehold, so both were put on at same time.

That’s essentially what I said so in registering the freehold purchase the existing lease was revealed and noted