Selling the house.

pothole65

I hope someone can help, my question is how do I sell a house not in my name.

My dad passed away in 2016, leaving no will, so we got probate to transfer his money into my mums account and handle his affairs and at the time mum told us the house was in both their names. As we could not locate the deeds in the house we assumed them to be lost, the property has never been registered on the Land Registry.

My mum passed away recently and we are applying for probate for her affairs, when clearing the attic in a old tin box we found the paper deeds, but they were only in my dads name.

What  would be the procedure for getting it registered with the Land Registery in mine or my sisters name so it could be sold.

babyblade41

you can sell even though it's in your late parents name . no need to change .

p00hsticks

@Land_Registry will hopefully be able to confirm, bur as babyblade says, as you have probate for your father you have the authority to sell it, and as you have the deeds the buyers solicitor can go ahead with the first registration of the property

badger09

p00hsticks said:

@Land_Registry will hopefully be able to confirm, bur as babyblade says, as you have probate for your father you have the authority to sell it, and as you have the deeds the buyers solicitor can go ahead with the first registration of the property

If house passed to mum on administration of dad's estate, surely Probate for late mum's will is needed before property can be sold?

OP there's no need to xfer the property into your names as executors before selling. In fact, if you do this you would lose FTB status (assuming you're not already home owner). Sell as executors and split the proceeds according to mum's will.  

user1977

What did dad's probate say about the house? Might need that amended if it said he only owned a half share.

Land_Registry

If the property was in his sole name then the whole legal ownership formed part of his estate. Whoever is named as his executor(s) can deal with the property so for example sell it. 

As you say ‘we got probate’ I assume that’s you and your sister
Mum may have inherited but as the executors did not transfer the legal ownership it does not form part of her estate. 

Whilst you can sell without registering it first most buyers, especially if taking a mortgage, will ask you to register it first. 

https://customerhelp.landregistry.gov.uk/guide-page-external/?stepid=1392102a-9a82-eb11-a812-000d3ad48f95&kbonly=true&setanswer=

Note - If Mum was the named executor then you can apply for probate and create what’s known as a chain of representation so Dad’s probate names Mum as executor and Mum’s probate names you/sister 

p00hsticks

pothole65 said:

As we could not locate the deeds in the house we assumed them to be lost, the property has never been registered on the Land Registry.

As an aside - from what I've read, if the deeds hadn't turned up later then it would have been more complicated / time consuming to get the property registered, so it would have been better to have had a good hunt to either find the deeds or gather evidence of the purchase and start the registration process at the time of your fathers death, rather than putting it off.

pothole65

All seems clearer now, just one more query, how long does probate last, as we had to take out probate for dad in 2017 is it still valid, sorry if this seems a dumb question to ask, but there’s no better place to find the answer than on here

user1977

Probate lasts indefinitely.