house registration

Abertawe25

do i have to register my house with the land registry by law? as i have the full deeds in my possession and we are the sole owners with no mortgage? and it is freehold.

user1977

No. If it was, how do you think you've got away with it so far?!

RAS

You don't have to register by law, assuming England or Wales, and if you don't the person buying will have to following their purchase.

It may take someone slightly longer to purchase, because their lawyer will have to go through the deeds with a fine-tooth comb and may have additional queries to ensure good title. That may put off some buyers, particularly if they have a limit time mortgage offer.

There is also the risk that something happens to the deeds meantime. At least if it's registered, it doesn't matter if there is a house fire, flood etc.

SVaz

The question is ; why wouldn’t you?
Unregistered properties are open to fraud. 

Fredw56

We won’t buy unregistered property. We did it once and it was an expensive, lengthy nightmare. Never again. The process exposed the sellers as liars. Our legal fees rose ten fold from the original quote. That was 1995.

First registration is when the worms come out the jar.

My advice would be do the registration. If you sell the buyer will have some sense of certainty.

IIRC the property act changed in about 1994 and property in England must be registered at any change of ownership after that date.

Abertawe25

thanks for all your help any idea how much it costs?

NeverTooLate

Abertawe25 said:

thanks for all your help any idea how much it costs?

It's a sliding scale depending on property value - for example a property of value £200,001-£500,000 it will cost £250 for voluntary first registration. Fees here:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/hm-land-registry-registration-services-fees

Of course if you get a solicitor to do it, you'll also have to pay their fees.

We have done this ourselves for a relative's house and it is relatively straightforward if you have all the deeds - detailed instructions here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-registrations/practice-guide-1-first-registrations#fees

The first thing you have to do is to get Land Registry to check that there are no charges against the property, which came as a bit of a shock to us because there was! The lender who had the charge had no idea what it was for and promptly removed it. I think this would have been a big problem if we had tried to sell the house without the registration.

SVaz

We sold an unregistered house in 2021,  my late Father’s.  We had the deeds ( eventually)   and the sale took no longer than a ‘normal’ sale, around 12 weeks from offer to completion.  

NeverTooLate

SVaz said:

We sold an unregistered house in 2021,  my late Father’s.  We had the deeds ( eventually)   and the sale took no longer than a ‘normal’ sale, around 12 weeks from offer to completion.  

I agree, if there are no complications with the first registration it shouldn't slow down the conveyancing, in fact when we bought our current (unregistered) house it was 3 weeks from offer to completion 

My point in the previous post that if you do it before you actually need to you have the time to sort out any issues.