Previous conveyancer failed to register title

Landregistryissues2025

Morning, I was hoping someone may be able to give me a pointer at what to do about this. 

I bought my flat 4 years ago and have recently agreed a sale. Whilst completing the first part of the conveyancing, my conveyancer advised me the property was not registered in my name, rather the owner before. 

I dug out the details of the previous solicitor and contacted her, she told me for some reason the transaction didn’t go through, 4 years ago but will expedite this now. 

This was 1 month ago, and it still hasn’t been completed, but it shows as being requested. 

This is holding up the sale of my property, and although the buyer is aware of the issue and, at the moment, okay with it, I am worried they may withdraw from the purchase. 

The previous solicitor doesn’t appear to be intending to either refund me the fee that I paid them at the time of the purchase, or provide anything in the way of compensation. I’d be happy with the fee back and am not interested particularly pursuing a complaint but the risk with this negligence is obvious, the property could have been ‘sold again’ by the previous owner etc etc. 

I guess I’d like to see if anyone else has been in this situation and could answer the following questions

- what should I do regarding this failure. It has caused me a huge amount of stress not to mention delaying the sale and causing uncertainty 
- How do I discuss the return of the fee I paid at the time, for something the solicitor didn’t do?

many thanks 

newsgroupmonkey_

What are your losses here?

This isn't the USA. You can only sue for money owed.

Landregistryissues2025

The fee that I paid for the conveyancer to do something that they didn’t, 4 years ago?

silvercar

@Land_Registry is our friendly spokesperson from the Land Registry. If you share (or DM them) your title number they can look at what has happened.

Their usual comment is that your purchase is protected, even if the registration hasn't gone through. Expediting once accepted, should complete the registration within  a couple of weeks if everything is in order. It may all hinge on why "for some reason it didn't go through".

newsgroupmonkey_ said:

What are your losses here?

This isn't the USA. You can only sue for money owed.

The loss is that OP paid for something they didn't get, namely registration of their ownership in a timely manner. The solicitor does now seem to be moving to get this sorted.

user1977

If the registration application is now at the registers (and there are no adverse applications in the interim - don't know whether priority searches were continued) then that is all which is legally required (albeit some lazy conveyancers sit on their hands until all previous applications are complete). There might be some token refund of fees due for the sloppy service, but I can't see there's any actual loss here.

EssexHebridean

Landregistryissues2025 said:

The fee that I paid for the conveyancer to do something that they didn’t, 4 years ago?

What fee are we talking about here - the Land Registry fee? That’s not a fee payable to the solicitor, but actually directly to the Land Registry.if you request that fee back now then they will not be in a position to register the property. 

If it is a separately itemised fee for the LR submission that you are talking about, then you could certainly write to the firm telling them that as they failed to ensure that the registration was completed at the time, you consider that they should refund you part or all of that fee on the basis that this is now delaying your ongoing sale. Whether they would actually make any refund is another question although “for a quiet life” they may do.

Landregistryissues2025

EssexHebridean said:

Landregistryissues2025 said:

The fee that I paid for the conveyancer to do something that they didn’t, 4 years ago?

What fee are we talking about here - the Land Registry fee? That’s not a fee payable to the solicitor, but actually directly to the Land Registry.if you request that fee back now then they will not be in a position to register the property. 

If it is a separately itemised fee for the LR submission that you are talking about, then you could certainly write to the firm telling them that as they failed to ensure that the registration was completed at the time, you consider that they should refund you part or all of that fee on the basis that this is now delaying your ongoing sale. Whether they would actually make any refund is another question although “for a quiet life” they may do.

I guess my view is it’s like paying for the weekly shop. Pay £200 and they deliver it 4 years later. Just seems totally unacceptable but maybe I’m being unreasonable and the solicitor ‘just made a mistake’

xxbwxx

Hi

Please may I ask where you got to with this situation? 

We are going through the exact same thing but our (cash / chain free!!) buyer has now said they are going to pull out. 

The expedited change request was submitted the end of Sept, apparently there has been a couple of back and forths between previous conveyancer and land registry and it is currently sat awaiting a senior officer picking it back up.

I’ve phoned today and the customer service advisor said they will try to contact the case worker to see if we can get it in front of one of their senior officers to get on with what needs doing asap but as its already marked as expedited it may not make any difference.

As a follow on question for other users to your original post..  
Where on earth do we stand in terms of compensation given we have lost out on the “ideal” buyer and no one can provide us with any form of time scales for a resolution and it should have been sorted 4yrs ago. We feel like there’s currently no point in re-listing until this is rectified!! Hugely frustrating. This is also risking us losing out on the onward property we were going to purchase. 

Thank you! 

silvercar

You put in a complaint to the solicitors that failed to register your ownership in a timely manner. See what their response is.

xxbwxx

@silvercar I’ve already requested the complaints contact info and have asked the solicitors how this happened. Their response was as follows:

“The original fee earner who dealt with the purchase is no longer employed by us so I can only advise as best I can.

We sent the application to the land Registry shortly after completion.

Due to back logs within the land Registry there was a delay in them looking at the application. They requested an additional document, upon dealing with the request we then found out the sellers’ solicitors was no longer trading.”

It’s apparently at that point that it fell into a black hole.

I was going to wait until the issue is resolved before putting complaint in so I have all info / timescales. Do you think it’s worth not waiting and just complaining asap? Ive also been advised to find out who their professional indemnity insurance is with and lodge a claim there but I don’t really know what we can claim for.

 A few hundred quid back really is no compensation to losing out on our buyer, ideally I wish there was something we could do to get the issue sorted immediately and convince our buyer back on board but I feel like our hands are completely tied. It just seems ridiculous we are unable to sell the house we’ve been living in and paying the mortgage on for 4 years! 

silvercar

xxbwxx said:

@silvercar I’ve already requested the complaints contact info and have asked the solicitors how this happened. Their response was as follows:

“The original fee earner who dealt with the purchase is no longer employed by us so I can only advise as best I can.

We sent the application to the land Registry shortly after completion.

Due to back logs within the land Registry there was a delay in them looking at the application. They requested an additional document, upon dealing with the request we then found out the sellers’ solicitors was no longer trading.”

It’s apparently at that point that it fell into a black hole.

I was going to wait until the issue is resolved before putting complaint in so I have all info / timescales. Do you think it’s worth not waiting and just complaining asap? Ive also been advised to find out who their professional indemnity insurance is with and lodge a claim there but I don’t really know what we can claim for.

 A few hundred quid back really is no compensation to losing out on our buyer, ideally I wish there was something we could do to get the issue sorted immediately and convince our buyer back on board but I feel like our hands are completely tied. It just seems ridiculous we are unable to sell the house we’ve been living in and paying the mortgage on for 4 years! 

That’s them acknowledging blame, falling into a black hole because the seller’s solicitor ceased trading is admitting they should have followed up and didn’t. If you are confident they are on the case, then I may be inclined to wait, if you feel they are still dragging their feet then complain now.

if you DM @Land_Registry the title number they may be able to see the progress made to date.

Once you make an official complaint, it is for them to notify their PI insurers.