Property not on Land Registry

lorryw

I have just discovered that my house isn't on the Land Registry.

I bought in 1980 and it seems all purchases after 1990 are on the registry.

I have searched for info online and gone down the usual rabbit hole of misinformation and adverts for Solicitors. I have the original deeds from 1890 (a true work of art) and details of previous owners over the years.

Is it a long winded, complex and expensive journey to appear on the Land Registry?

FreeBear

What you are looking at is a voluntary first registration. If you have ALL the documents showing the chain of ownership from new through to yourself, it is not a difficult task. I had to do a compulsory first registration a few years back and found it pretty painless. Once the relevant fee had been paid, application went through fairly quickly and I got the original documents back - You need to tell them that you want the originals back, otherwise they get destroyed.

No need to pay a solicitor or one of those online companies to do what is basically an administrative job. Use this site for further information → https://www.gov.uk/registering-land-or-property-with-land-registry/register-for-the-first-time

We also have an official LR representative lurking on the forum, so he can be pinged for specific advice.

pumas

Why do you want it registered? It doesn't need to be until sold, when the buyer would have to do it.

Land_Registry

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82069951#Comment_82069951

Very true but a lot of sales/purchases of unregistered properties can often stall as the buyer's mortgage lender won't complete until the seller has registered it. Some will but mortgage providers have a range of mortgage products and many will see it as being unregistered as a risk to be resolved before they will say Yes to completion.

As you are thinking about the deeds and it being unregistered it's worth considering a voluntary first registration so that should you decide to sell or deal with the property in some other way the fact it is unregistered isn't an issue for the parties you are dealing with.

FreeBear has linked to the online guidance and have a look at our PG1 as well

Practice guide 1: first registrations - GOV.UK

Purely voluntary and worth the consideration whilst on your mind

PeterE17

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82069951#Comment_82069951

Unregistered properties are vulnerable to title fraud. It's rare but there.

daveyjp

Better to do it now you have time. Any issues are best picked up sooner, rather than when the property needs to be sold.

FreeBear

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82069951#Comment_82069951

I wish my mother had done a voluntary first registration before she died. It would have saved the executors a lot of trouble tracking down the deeds (eventually found buried in an archive in Cambridge). The fee would have also been a lot less, so could have saved the executors a bit of money.

peterhjohnson

When I sold an unregistered property in 2019, there was a kerfuffle because solicitor asked my lender for the deeds and someone at the lender said "no" on the grounds that it was unnecessary these days because the Land Registry dealt with it. This caused about a week's delay while my solicitor "educated" the lender