Buying an unregistered house

[Killerqueen2244]

Hi, we’ve put in an offer for a house that we’ve just found out isn’t registered on the Land Registry as the owners have lived in the house since new (30+ years)

Sorry, pressed the wrong button cause of a bloody pop up ad!!!

Anyway, can anyone advise how long the process of registering the house & land will take? And should we be the ones paying to get it registered?

Our solicitor got it sorted at the same time as everything else, didn't delay anything.

Thank you! My solicitor is fairly on the ball but with our buyer trying to get us out in less than 2 weeks I’m a bit stressed that the ‘inbetween houses’ bit is going to be longer than I feared!!

I have the same issue with my Dads house that we have to sell. Solicitor said the purchasers solicitor would register it on completion

This should be down to the sellers, we had an issue that the land deeds were incorrectly registered, your solicitor should be able to tell you time line, plus make it a condition of completion.

You can also talk to your solicitor about the vendors taking out indemnity insurance.

Talk to your solicitor. Who presumably discovered this via the searches?

It shouldn't take anymore time than usual. If you want you can ask the current owners to register it immediately.

Thank you everyone, you’re all making me feel better about it. It only came about because I went round the house with the estate agent to check out some of the stuff that came up on the survey. He said ‘you do know this house isn’t registered so it’s going to hold up your house sale...oh and your buyers really want you out on the 17th’

From maybe having to stay with parents or in-laws for a week or so it’s now looking like it would be longer so I’m getting quite stressed! I was reading about registering land last night and I think with everything that’s going on I wasn’t concentrating!!

You don't have to do anything. You control exchange and completion dates.

The actual process of buying an unregistered house won't necessarily be longer, it's just that instead of downloading title deeds from Land Registry instantly, the sellers solicitor will have to be given all the original title documents (from whoever has them in safe keeping, i.e. seller or lender) in order to photocopy all the relevant papers to send as a contract pack to your solicitor. Some of those documents will be large/foolscap papers and difficult to read and photocpy, and a lot of documents detailing previous transfers/conveyances to owners will need to be included, along with an Epitome of Title, which is a kind of "contents" page detailing all the owners previously up until the current owners. If these papers are readily to hand, which prove that the current sellers are the rightful owners, then the transaction can proceed.

After that, it shouldn't affect you other than when you complete, because then your solicitor will have to make an application to register you as the new owner at the Land Registry. All those old papers will need to be submitted by post (not online) and the Land Registry can take months to go through the papers and register you as the new owner. The Land Registry fee for a First Registration is double that of a registered property and as the new owner, you would have to pay this.

The current owners could register the property prior to selling to you (then they would pay the Land Registry fee), however this will add a few months onto the transaction.