How do we find out previous owners of a house?

[TeapotCollection]

We have to register MILs house with Land Registry because it’s currently not registered

(note: we’ve been told that any property that hasn’t changed hands or had a new mortgage since 1990 is unlikely to be registered. This will probably affect thousands of people)

The first step is to apply for a search against all previous owners since 1925 but where the heck do we get this information from?

There are some people listed with the mountain of paperwork with the deeds but it doesn’t go that far back

Any help would be very much appreciated

Electoral rolls, 1939 register. Will show occupants as a starting point but they may not be owners.

Actually that’s not correct op, it became compulsory in 1925 and was gradually phased in with every sale after this until 1990 when it was automatic.

Sorry should add it’s about 12-13 percent of houses unregistered.

PIL bought theirs around 50 years ago and paid the mortgage off in 2001. It definitely isn’t registered, we have checked. I’m surprised it’s not a bigger percentage than that

Think I’m going to have to find a Land Registry helpline to ring, there surely has to be one. I have no idea how anyone is meant to find this information

Good idea about electoral roll LIZS

Do you have an active local history society? They can be a surprising mine of information if you're in a small town or village. Ours is somewhere between fascinating and stalkery.

We had a similar problem some years ago, for the same reasons. We borrowed a copy of the neighbours title deeds to reconstruct the details and bought an indemnity policy. Our case was a bit simpler than yours as the house had only one owner from new.

We knew the deeds existed but the solicitors couldn't find them at the time They did confirm that they'd had sight of the deeds for a legal transaction by letter to our solicitor dealing with it.

IIRC we were asked for bills as well to show they'd been at the property for that time, have they ever had planning permission for anything?

The people who sold to PIL will be listed on the Conveyance transferring the property to them. There will also be other deeds with the pre-registration title deeds which show the line of ownership of the property. Searches should have been carried out against previous owners when PIL purchased the property and these will be called "Land Charges Search" This will be a short document with a list of all the previous owners and dates to search against their names. is there any reason why you are registering it now? It is normal to wait until the property is sold and the new buyers will then apply for first registration.

The transfer/conveyancing document within the deeds will name the people who transferred ownership to your parents.

If you have not spoken to the Land Registry, do phone them. I had a problem, different to yours, about house ownership. I phoned Land Registry and spoke to a very helpful lady who sent me the correct forms to fill in and it was sorted easily. (Saved me paying a solicitor ).

I really do appreciate your input everyone, thank you 😊

To answer some questions

Jellycatrabbit that made me laugh 😆 good idea though

They have never applied for planning permission, never needed anything

There’s a mountain of paperwork with the deeds which I have to say I haven’t properly looked through yet. Maybe I’ll be lucky and the Land Charges Search will be there

Barton10, we tried to take FIL off the deeds (he passed away recently) and it’s all come from that. We thought it had to be done before it can be sold but it looks like we might have got that wrong. I really hope so, we won’t do it unless we’ve absolutely got to

Definitely look to your local history group. Ours is fantastic, though I can totally relate to JellyCats appraisal 😂

Turned out we had a local historian in our street & he gave us some fascinating information about our own property. Turns out parts of our house predate the deeds by several hundred years & he had owners names going back to beyond our deeds year or building too

Phone the LR first. I would be surprised if there's no way to get round finding all this out.

The deeds to the property will contain a number of old conveyances. You will really need a solicitor to register it for you. It is not straighforward.

Thank you Collaborate, I know you know about these things. Do we have to do it though? Barton10s post seemed to suggest not, and that it can (if MIL decides she wants to sell) be sold unregistered

@TeapotCollection I'm a conveyancing solicitor, you definitely don't need to register the house before selling if you don't want to

@bigbluebus

The transfer/conveyancing document within the deeds will name the people who transferred ownership to your parents.

@bigbluebus - this. and/or ring Land Registry.

Used to work for a conveyancing solicitor and they should be able to help you or LR who may be cheaper and provide similar/same info.

If you can show good title ie a conveyance to your pil that is over 15 years old you probably don't need previous owners. Can I suggest booking an appointment with a local solicitor and taking everything that you've got? A good solicitor will probably have a quick look for free if the sale is then going to come their way (I would have done when I was practicing). You can sell unregistered and then the buyer registers on completion but obviously they'll need all the documents to do it. Good luck!

Thank you so much folks, always good to hear from trained professionals 🙂

I’ll speak to MIL later but I suspect that if doesn’t sell (I don’t think she will) we’ll probably leave it

I agree it needs a solicitor to do it, I’d like to think I’m reasonably intelligent but it looks horrendous

Look on here

www.gov.uk/government/publications/land-charges-official-search-application-k15

Teapot unregistered land is more complex and needs a trained eye, absolutely nothing to do with intelligence or lack thereof! Please do ring a local solicitor. It's such a myth that solicitors are just ruthless charging machines. Often someone knowledgeable in practice locally will point you in the right direction. Especially in a rural community where I think you might be as it's where unregistered land tends (not always) to be. Any good solicitor will be transparent about charges so you won't be landed with a big bill for a 5 minute chat! Please don't panic and let us know how you go

It is called applying for a first registration. they are bread-and-butter to a conveyancer – I actually quite like doing them! A solicitor will charge you approximately £500 to do the registration. you will need to get together all the deeds and searches and hand them over as they will know what they’re looking for.

I will say first registrations at land registry are taking approximately 6 to 8 months at the moment due to a backlog

MIL has decided she’s not going to bother. She has no intention of selling. I don’t blame her, no point spending money when there’s no need

We all had a look through the aforementioned mountain of paperwork that came with the deeds and I have to say it was absolutely fascinating. PILs first search in 1976 cost £1.10, there’s a folded up map that looks like something out of Zorro, a mortgage document and land search from 1895, loads of other stuff. All now back in MILs safe

Thank you so much everyone for your help on this, I really do appreciate it and I hope the thread might help others in the same situation

We had this situation when MIL died in 2019.

We had to do the first registration ourselves. No prospective buyer would touch it without.

This was particularly galling as I had suggested to DH, as Attorney, that he get it registered while MIL was still alive, but her DC would not do anything with the house that they could not plain to her and she had lost capacity by the time it came to light.

The house was purchased in 1974. Mortgage paid off in the 80s.

My parents owned there house for 50 odd years
I think they bought it in 1976
It was registered on the LR
However The bank Santander had the deeds and just about every single piece of paper going back to when the house was built in 1870 There was even a will of a previous owner 😂😂
So I would contact the bank who had the mortgage as they may have the original deeds and paperwork in their vaults