The Land Registry is the platform responsible for the registration of title to land in England and Wales. The Land Registry hold information on registered properties in relation to the ownership of the land and any registered rights of way, covenants, leases and title extent.

After a house purchase is completed, the Buyers’ Solicitor send the application to the Land Registry to update the deed to reflect the new owner’s name. The Land Registry website is a public platform that stores the electronic deeds. Of course, there was a time when this platform did not exist and so all deeds were in paper format. The deeds were often held by mortgage lenders with an open account. It then became compulsory to register properties at the Land Registry, but this was only triggered when a transfer of value initiated this. If a property has not been transferred for value since this date, it is possible that the property is “unregistered” meaning that the deeds are still in the paper format.

This slightly changes the conveyancing process as we do it today, we usually download the deeds from the Land Registry which means that we can often check who the registered owner of the property is almost instantly. If the Land Registry hold no records, then we require the Seller of the property to be able to find the original deeds. It is common for several different deeds to be needed to make up the full original deeds.

There are two ways this can be approached by conveyancers, the first would be to issue an unregistered contract to the Buyers’ Solicitors. This just means that the format of the Contract itself and the accompanying documents slightly vary. The rest of the process shouldn’t change much, the questions being raised by the Buyers’ Solicitor will make reference to it being an unregistered contract and the Buyers’ Solicitors will need to submit for first registration at the Land Registry following completion.

The other option is to register the property before issuing the contract so that the rest of the process is the same as normal. The Sellers’ Solicitors would still require the original deeds to be able to do this and would have to wait for the Land Registry to register the property before starting the transaction. Due to there being an ongoing sale, the Sellers’ Solicitors can them apply to expedite the registration so that it does not cause too much delay in the process.

Once the house purchase has completed, the application is made to the Land Registry to update the register with the new owners details.

For further advice and assistance please contact our Residential Property team on 01604 828282 / 01908 660966 or email info@franklins-sols.co.uk