Remortgage - land registry delay

Mike357

Hello.

We bought a new build in April and ported the mortgage from the previous house over & added on additional borrowing. There was only 8 months remaining on the fixed mortgage so knew we’d have to remortgage more or less straight away.

We got an offer in July on a mortgage and have started the legal process - this is where it come to light that the land registry has not completed & we’ve been told we can’t remortgage without this. We were told this could be 18-24 months. We’ve asked for expedition which we’ve been told has been granted but there are prior applications holding up the process. 

We have never been made aware from the port of the mortgage (using a mortgage advisor) through the legal process that this was the case around land registry and now we feel like we’re going to be so much worse off for something completely out of our control when we have done everything we can.

Has anyone had any similar experience or advice on where we can take this please? 

Thanks 

K_S

Mike357 said:

Hello.

We bought a new build in April and ported the mortgage from the previous house over & added on additional borrowing. There was only 8 months remaining on the fixed mortgage so knew we’d have to remortgage more or less straight away.

We got an offer in July on a mortgage and have started the legal process - this is where it come to light that the land registry has not completed & we’ve been told we can’t remortgage without this. We were told this could be 18-24 months. We’ve asked for expedition which we’ve been told has been granted but there are prior applications holding up the process. 

We have never been made aware from the port of the mortgage (using a mortgage advisor) through the legal process that this was the case around land registry and now we feel like we’re going to be so much worse off for something completely out of our control when we have done everything we can.

Has anyone had any similar experience or advice on where we can take this please? 

Thanks 

@mike357 You could say that I would say this as a mortgage broker myself, but I wouldn't think that the mortgage adviser would be able to warn you about future issues relating to delays at the land registry.

If anything, it's your solicitor (that worked on the purchase of the new-build) who would have been best placed to warn you about delays at the LR to process your new registration application which they would have submitted as part of the conveyancing.

And hopefully your current solicitor (acting in the remo) warned you about this early enough so that they could file a request to expedite the process as early as possible.

Perhaps not ideal, but hopefully you should still have the fallback option of doing a product-switch and staying with your current lender.

Mike357

Thanks so much for getting back to me. Appreciate that and I’m not sure I would have thought the mortgage advisor would know but we did discuss having to remortgage straight away so you’d expect to know about land registry being a requirement for getting a mortgage. 

We can look to stay with current lender but it’s going to be a lot more money per month than what we’d fixed with the new lender.

I was hopeful that because it is land registry holding things up, that there’d be some alternative to confirming this in the interim but that seems to be what no one can confirm. 

Thanks 

silvercar

Try posting your query on the Land Registry thread here: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5685941/land-registry-questions#latest

hopefully the Land Reg rep can see it and reply. If you include the title ref they can search for exactly your deeds and see what the problem is.

From recent experience waiting for LR to update deeds, once a case is expedited it should only take about 2 weeks. If there are prior cases holding up yours, then any problems with such a case will be given a set time to sort out their issue before they are removed from the queue and then the next case can be looked at. So expediting should bring you results much sooner.

Mike357

Thank you for the advice silvercar - that sounds reassuring. I will post in the LR thread!