Should houses be allowed to be sold when they’re not registered with the land registry?

[jimmyeatworld]

Because I don’t think they should be put on the market until it’s officially registered with the LR.

This is more of a rant because I’m so sick of my sellers solicitors taking their sweet time to do anything. It took them 6 weeks to even look at preparing draft contracts and only then did they realise the house wasn’t registered. So who can I moan about, the estate agents for agreeing to market a house that wasn’t registered ? The elderly sellers who never really had any reason to register their property they’ve been in since the 50’s, or the solicitors for not getting on the draft contracts sooner and then realising ?

I think if you want to sell your house then you should have to register it beforehand or at least have the process started before you can market it, no wonder the waiting times are as long as they are currently. Ours had been expedited but the sellers solicitors are so slow i am worrying it won’t get done soon enough, this is before we’ve even started the searches.

Registering a property in order to sell it usually prolongs the sale by months.
As long as the deeds are in order , first registration ( with the new owner) is almost always better when done in tandem with the house sale.

We were told explicitly NOT to register my FiL’s house when we inherited it.
The problem is the seller’s conveyancer, not the process.

Our mortgage offer expires end of November. Which yeah it’s a while away but we’ve managed to sell our house in 12 weeks. And that time flew by !!

We’re on good terms with the sellers. Would it be pointless asking them to get a new solicitor at this point ?

What’s worrying me is even if the first registration goes through smoothly, it’s the sellers solicitors doing everything at a snails pace which means our mortgage offer could expire before we manage to complete. We can’t get an extension our broker already checked

I'm guessing if it's being expedited it shouldn't take very long.

We bought our current house last year (offer accepted mid May, completed mid September) and we only received confirmation a couple of weeks ago that it was finally registered with the Land Registry. I admit we were getting a little concerned. (Obviously that wasn't an expedited first registration).

Ours was a probate sale (had been owned by same lady since 1970 and she'd never bothered to register the house) and our - otherwise very good, local conveyancing solicitor - didn't once suggest expediting registration.

We weren't getting a mortgage though, which I'm guessing makes a difference as there's no lender insisting these boxes are ticked ahead of exchange.

I would start quietly looking at alternative purchase options. Not withdrawing at this rage from the one identified but there is a lot of risk involved.

It's shouldn't be a problem as long as they have the deeds and I think it's automatically registered at the first sale. The house we live in now we have the deeds from when we bought a number of years ago, but it is now registered. I assume the solicitor just did it as part of the conveyancing. It didn't affect the sale at all at the time, the deeds were passed from one solicitor to the other and searched for any potential problems and that was it, if the ownership is dubious or the deeds can't be found it could be a problem I assume. It was probably more common then so everyone was used to dealing with it though.

I’ve spoken to the land registry and they can’t tell me anything annoyingly, and I also can’t speak to the sellers solicitors. The LR have told me though that they have sent a requisition to the solicitors a week ago and still haven’t had anything back 🤷‍♀️
Our sellers already have a house they brought a couple of years ago and have pretty much moved in but we’re in a 1 bed rental on top of each other absolutely dying to get into the house. It’s just so frustrating how slow the solicitors are being.

I really want this house, we paid 10k more than we wanted to for it aswell which stings abit but we was happy to do that if we got the house. But all this that’s going on just makes you think, is it worth it?!

No @jimmyeatworld you haven't paid more for it, you've offered more for it.
Buy it unregistered and register on purchase.
There are still enough solicitors around who can do unregistered conveyancing to ensure this can happen.

The property wouldn't usually be registered until after the sale so I'm not sure I understand what the hold up is for. Why are they trying to get it registered before the sale?

It is down to your solicitor to review all the deeds as is usual in unregistered conveyancing which would take longer than a registered conveyance, but they used to be done in a fairly standard six weeks when I was younger so shouldn't be excessive. The actual registration came later so the Land Registry wasn't involved in the transfer at all.

Can we even buy a property that isn’t registered with the land registry?
Sorry if I haven’t made it clear, this is a first registration. The sellers have told prove it is their house to sell us

I don’t think you can ask for it to be expedited until you have a reason (eg a sale offer!) to do so. So it might. It be possible to do it before marketing a property.

When a solicitor is compiling the documents which form the draft contract pack, a registered property means that it is pretty instant obtaining title deeds and copies of old deeds from Land Registry. They are usually waiting for the seller to complete the protocol forms (F&F, Property Info Form etc) and provide warranties/certificates for any work undertaken to the property.

With an unregistered property, the solicitor has to ask the seller to locate all the physical paper deeds (often on old large parchment paper and hand written etc) and forward all the original papers to the solicitor. An assistant/secretary will probably asked to photocopy each paper (increasing and decreasing sizes so that all documents are shown in their entirety. Unfortunately, this can take some time, firstly awaiting the sellers to send the papers in, and secondly photocopying every piece of paper in a timely manner depending upon the assistant's workload, as the issuing of draft papers may not be their priority if other exchange or completion work needs to be done.

That could account for much of the delay in your solicitor receiving the draft contract.

If the seller instructs a new solicitor, they will have to wait for this solicitor to send all their papers back to them and they will need to post all the papers back to the new solicitor, who then has to compile a new draft contract pack. I'd be very surprised if this is any quicker.

We did in 2024 (see my post above).

From offer to exchange took 15 weeks (completion a few days later), although it was our sale that held things up.

Our purchase of a non-registered house requiring first registration was actually ready to exchange in about 9 weeks.

First registration itself took until July 2025.

I guess we had a solicitor who knew what they were doing with regards to unregistered conveyancing.

It would be better if Land Registry could clear the backlog, and then all registrations could happen promptly. There are loads of new builds round here that people are wanting to sell, but haven't got first registration since they bought a couple of years ago.....

I used to deal with a lot of unregistered properties when I did conveyancing many years ago. As long as the title documents are in order there is nothing to stop you buying the property before it is registered, even if you are buying with a mortgage. It isn't so common now as there is compulsory registration throughout England but when I was doing it this wasn't the case.

However it does sound from what you've said that they have already applied for first registration if the land registry is sending requisitions to them.

It’s rare that a title is so messy that it’s advisable for the seller’s solicitor to get it registered first. But that ship appears to have sailed, so get the estate agent to chase the seller’s solicitor.

Do you mind saying what county you’re in? I’m just being nosy.

It's perfectly fine to sell an un-registered house. Don't let it annoy you.

BUT, I'd like to see all homes registered so that we can bring in a Home Value Tax! That'll stop the dinner table conversation about how my house has earned more than me this year!

We’re in Staffordshire.

I think what’s getting to me more than anything is how slow the sellers solicitors are and that’s worrying me once this first registration is done (🤞) that they’ll be just as slow replying to enquiries from searches etc. I just want to complete before the end of November, which when I say that it’s like of course you will! But ss so far have been really slow and all the estate agent says is they’re snowed under, super busy, making out they can’t cope which doesn’t fill me with confidence!!

But they were 'superslow' getting the paperwork together because they needed to get it from the sellers.
You do understand that they can only go at the speed of their clients, don't you?
It's not going to be them answering search enquiries, it's the seller.

What was the reason given to not register it ?

You need to get the estate agent to start badgering everyone (and ideally the sellers too if possible). Tell the estate agent your deadline, and that you’ll have to pull out if it’s not met and you are concerned about how long house registration takes and you want all the other searches etc getting going asap while the registration is going through (some solicitors seem to do things one at a time for some unknown reason) - call them everyday or every couple of days. You have to give people a reason to get their finger out, and also get on people’s nerves sadly.

Plus have a conversation with your solicitor to see if the house can be purchased without your seller registering first. As it sounds like this might be a possibility and would speed things up considerably so I would be pursuing that.

There is a similar situation with the house next to my daughter- elderly chap suddenly died. So far it has been 2 years and counting - the person buying it has more patience then I would - not registered and not sure about the original deeds.