Remortgaging with anti-fraud restriction

[DippyDuck19]

I am in the process of remortgaging my property but there is an anti-fraud restriction on the title deeds. I therefore require a solicitor (SRA or CILEX registered) to witness me signing the deeds and obtain a disponer certificate.

I have contacted many solicitors and no one is able to do it.

Does anyone know any solicitors in the London or Kent area that may do this?

Alternatively is it easier to apply to land registry to get the restriction removed? Any idea of the cost of this and how easy the process is?

Thanks in advance

Do you know who placed the restriction on it and for what reason? You needn't tell us on here but the Land Registry won't just remove restrictions without proper authorisation. If you do know who placed it, then have you spoken to them?

@godmum56i have no idea who placed it. We bought the property 5 years ago, this is the first remortgage and the first I’m hearing of it. I’m trying to look through all my paperwork from when we purchased the property as I don’t recall it being mentioned then either.

Cilex have to be a conveyancing practitioner to sign a fraud restriction certificate. If you apply to remove the restriction you will still have to have a conveyancer confirm you are the registered proprietor as part of the application. Personally I would not sign one other than for a current or previous client given the level of responsibility and the investigation that would be required for someone I had no knowledge of or anything to compare to from a previous matter.

It will have been added at the point you bought and registered it- they do not carry over to subsequent purchasers. The firm who acted for you will be able to confirm.

its also known as a form LL and can usually only be added by the owner of the property....so either it somehow got put on when you bought the property or it was put on by the previous owner and also somehow never got removed. Was anyone else involved in the purchase of the property? partner? spouse? anybody? Have you contacted the Land Registry to see if they will give you any further information? They are a bit slow at the moment but I have found them very helpful.

@Andithoughtiwasspecialthank you for your helpful response. I have gone through my solicitor paperwork from the purchase of my property. There has never been any mention of an anti-fraud restriction and I have not applied to put one in place. I have copies off all the land registry paperwork I signed and again nothing for this restriction.

@godmum56I purchased the property with my partner and he has no recollection of this either (I did all of the paperwork side of things and just asked him to sign where necessary, so he probably wouldn’t have a clue).

I have the itemised receipt from our conveyancing solicitors at the time of purchase and there are no fees paid for registering an anti-fraud restriction.

I have copies of all previous transfer deeds of our property. We are the third owners. I have a copy of the deeds from developer to first buyer. Then from him to who we purchased from. There are no restrictions outlined in any of these documents.

I have contacted Land registry and just waiting for a response. But I am now wondering if it has been put on in error.

it sounds like it. Sort of the same but different, when we paid off our mortgage, Dh did it in person at the bank. There was nothing "little woman about it, we had two puppies at the time and someone had to stay home with them! Anyway it wasn't until a few years later when he retired and we were getting all the outstanding admin in order that we looked on the Land Registry and found that the bank had never removed the charge placed on the house from the mortgage. LR fully accepted from the paperwork we had that the charge should be removed but only the person or organisation who put the charge on can remove it. It did get sorted and quite easily, just took some time.
I hope the LR can give you the information that you need.

Do you have a copy of your signed TR1? Orvthe one that was sent to you to sign?Is there anything in box 11?

I have a feeling it may be this?

No disposition by a sole proprietor of the registered estate (except a trust corporation) under which capital money arises is to be registered unless authorised by an order of the court.

RESTRICTION: No disposition by the proprietors of the registered estate is to be registered unless one or more of them makes a statutory declaration or statement of truth, or their conveyancer gives a certificate, that the disposition is in accordance with the Declaration of Trust made between (NAME DP) and (DippyDuck19) and dated 4 November 2020 or some variation thereof referred to in the declaration, statement or certificate.

That's different and relates to a declaration of trust. A mortgage is a disposition. To confirm they would need a copy of the mortgage docs and the declaration of trust

If it’s the same restriction I had whilst trying to remortgage, I went back to the solicitor who dealt with the purchase who we then had a zoom call with both DH and I to confirm our identities, and then drafted a letter on company headed paper stating we are the persons on the Land registry. It was a pain and cost a few hundred pounds but had to be done.

This was the restriction we had, not sure if it’s the same as yours. Me being super cautious I thought it would be best to tick a section on one of the land registry forms to basically prevent anyone from registering our property, didn’t realise it also meant us as the owners too.

We have this at the moment. Is your mortgage currently with Nationwide by any chance? Ours is amd apparently they insist on this so our solicitor sorted at the time of purchase. It’s causing us a right pain (and about 300 quid) to get sorted now and we’ll have to do again when we remortgage in a few years

Just to update this post - after lots of back and forth, me insistent we do not have an antifraud restriction and my solicitors insisting we do (but who I am to argue with someone who supposedly knows what they’re talking about). I eventually found a solicitor who would provide a disponer certificate which cost us £270. Sent this to my solicitors who then lost it resulting in my trying to obtain a second copy.
Anyway, weeks pass and the solicitors come back they’ve found another restriction on the property to do with the declaration of trust and want a further £75 to satisfy this. Now I’m confused again!
I ask them to talk me through the 6 restrictions on my register title to which they suddenly realise I have no anti-fraud restriction. I never needed a disponer certificate and didn’t need to spend £270!!!
Now taking this further to try and get my money back!