At HM Land Registry we find that applicants sometimes mistakenly refer to amalgamation when the application is actually for a merger. This distinction is important, because HM Land Registry uses certain criteria to decide whether or not we should process an application for amalgamation, but we would normally complete a merger.
An amalgamation joins two or more parcels of registered and/or unregistered estates affecting different extents of land under a single registered title.
For amalgamation to proceed, it must be both possible and beneficial for HM Land Registry to complete the application, which must first fulfil certain requirements.
If these requirements are met, we will then consider whether or not amalgamation is beneficial from HM Land Registry’s perspective, taking account of the applicant’s needs and the additional time it would take to process the application, on a case-by-case basis.
Current priorities mean we are able to accept only those applications for amalgamation that will bring positive advantage to a number of prospective purchasers, for example:
By the same measure, we would be unlikely to progress:
It is important to note, however, that registration under separate title numbers does not impede future dealings with the titles, as any number of titles can be dealt with in one instrument.
A merger is the fusion of two or more estates, for example leasehold into freehold or a superior leasehold. It takes place when the leasehold interest and its immediate reversionary estate come into the same ownership. This can occur when the tenant acquires the immediate reversionary estate or when the landlord acquires the leasehold interest.
The lease is absorbed by the reversion and thus determined (which is the same principle as for surrender). For merger to take place, the following conditions apply.
For more information about merger of a lease, see our practice guide 26 on GOV.UK, and for guidance on surrender and regrant applications, see our handy checklist.
Amalgamations can and do happen if there are good reasons and it makes sense to do so from HM Land Registry’s perspective. Mergers, however, are routinely applied for and processed and, although they cannot always be completed, this is usually the result of technical issues with the application, such as the presence of a restriction.
First published in the Law Society Property Section, Property in Practice.
We welcome your comments about this blog in the comments below. Please note that we are unable to discuss individual cases through the comments section and would request that all such queries be directed to our Contact Us web form where you will receive a response as soon as possible.
Reflecting on last week’s second National Conveyancing Week (NCW), we want to take this valuable opportunity to catch up with and pay tribute to conveyancers.
Considerable challenges persist within the property sector. We recognise the increased demands and pressures on the valuable service you provide and we fully support the critical role you continue to play in every property transaction.
The conveyancing profession underpins the property market and we are exploring new ways to assist you in the vital work you do. While reducing the backlog remains our number one priority, we are introducing new services and support to make life a little easier for our customers.
Although there is still much to do, we’ve made numerous strides in the past year. Here is a flavour of our current and recent activities.
Acknowledging our need for more caseworkers to tackle our on-going challenges, we’re continuing to build up our team of experts.
Thanks to constructive feedback, and our own experience, new training and initiatives to help the sector stay on top of its game include:
While our overriding focus remains firmly on the challenges facing us all today, we know we need to prepare for the future.
Our Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Customer and Strategy, Mike Harlow, linked up with Bold Legal Group’s Chief Executive, Rob Hailstone, during National Conveyancing Week to discuss topics affecting day-to-day conveyancing, as well as HM Land Registry’s current direction of travel.
Stressing that speed of service remains our primary focus, Mike confirmed that HM Land Registry’s significant investment in its core capacity and capability is bearing fruit, with output at a record high and the age of all case types decreasing.
It is vital that the sector work together, however, and so we are pleased to be part of the Digital Property Market Steering Group (DPMSG). The group is currently seeking views from everyone involved in buying and selling property on how it can improve the uptake of digital processes and action upfront information. The survey is live until midnight 1 April 2024.
We hope you will take the chance to have your say.
A final word from Mike:
“As somebody who used to [be a conveyancer] myself I do know how tough it is at times, I know the pressures, you can’t always manage your work, the expectations on what you should do as the professional who’s making it all happen. It’s a pretty tough job and a pretty tough career, but it’s immensely important.”
We welcome your comments about this blog in the comments below. Please note that we are unable to discuss individual cases through the comments section and would request that all such queries be directed to our Contact Us web form where you will receive a response as soon as possible.
Searchland took part in the Geovation Accelerator Programme in 2021. The programme is co-sponsored by HM Land Registry and Ordnance Survey and supports start-ups in the geospatial and property sectors.
Searchland is a PropTech (property technology) company that uses various datasets, including those from HM Land Registry, to provide a business-to-business platform for property developers, architects, planners, agents and others. Searchland’s platform enables users to access and manipulate information, such as HM Land Registry’s ownership, leases, transaction prices and company ownership data. This helps their customers to make informed decisions about property development opportunities.
Other users include renewable energy and utility companies. For example, solar panel providers using Searchland’s platform can easily investigate the best sites according to proximity to substations, planning permissions and so on.
Hugh explains the benefits of taking part in the Geovation Accelerator Programme and how it probably sped up Searchland’s development by a year. It fast-tracked their journey from an idea to a business, providing access to valuable courses, mentorship and a supportive community of fellow start-ups.
Since taking part in the Geovation Accelerator Programme, Searchland has gone from strength to strength. Hugh says a recent data integration with Rightmove means customers can immediately see whether or not a site is on the market, which gives them a competitive advantage in acquiring land for potential development.
Searchland’s goal is to become a comprehensive Customer Relationship Management-like platform for the property industry. With continued growth and strategic partnerships, they are poised to make further advances in streamlining property development processes.
We welcome your comments about this blog in the comments below. Please note that we are unable to discuss individual cases through the comments section and would request that all such queries be directed to our Contact Us web form where you will receive a response as soon as possible.
Last year, we launched the Specialist Services Hub, which brought our five specialist services together in one place, including Ask for Guidance.
Roughly 65% of complex cases receive requisitions. This is because some points are hard to anticipate in advance and we are keen to work directly with customers to ensure everything is in place before we receive the application.
This service provides expert guidance on complex cases, help to navigate through the registry processes and support in avoiding unnecessary errors before lodging an application.
But customers often ask: what constitutes a ‘complex case’? In this series, we look at real examples of thorny issues that our experts have resolved, from lifting a 100-year-old caution against dealings, to enquiries under the Settled Land Act 1925 and Mission and Pastoral Measure 2011, and this one, about removing a historic, paid-up charge.
The Ask for Guidance team was contacted by a solicitor whose client had a query about a charge on the register of a property he had recently inherited.
The client wanted to sell the property but was thwarted by a registered charge in the name of a private individual, who could not be traced to provide the necessary discharge evidence. He had reason to believe no loan money was ever received, but there was no paperwork in regard to the charge.
The solicitor’s enquiries had revealed the lender no longer resided at the address in the register, so they couldn’t be traced that way. The solicitor contacted us looking for the best way to proceed.
We told the solicitor we had reviewed historical versions of the register to try to locate any previous addresses for, or information about, the lender. In doing so, we had inspected the transfer to the current registered proprietor. This showed the absent lender was a signatory to the transfer in his capacity as director of the transferor, a company from the British Virgin Islands (BVI).
The historic register revealed an additional “care of” address for the BVI company so, in our response, we suggested the director might be contactable there. We also pointed out that, alternatively, the BVI company register might reveal the company’s contact details; and at the very least it might indicate whether or not the company was still active. It was likely the director of the BVI company (being the private individual holding the charge) could be found that way.
If the matter couldn’t be resolved by locating the individual lender, there was another option to be considered. We could accept evidence under Rule 114(4) Land Registration Rules 2003:
The registrar is entitled to accept and act upon any other proof of satisfaction of a charge that he may regard as sufficient.
Evidence varies according to circumstance, but as an example, the information might comprise a Statutory Declaration or Statement of Truth by the borrower, supplemented by documentary proof of the sum secured by the charge, together with bank statements showing repayments for the duration of the loan term to final redemption.
On another occasion, it might constitute a written receipt of the final payment or other documentary evidence of redemption from the lender, such as an endorsed receipt on the charge.
Essentially, under the Rule, independent documentary evidence must convince the registrar that the loan has been repaid.
The information gathered through the Ask for Guidance service also allows us to update our own guidance. As a result of this enquiry, practice guide 31 was updated and section 2.6 added to include the advice regarding Rule 114(4) of the Land Registration Rules 2003 given above. Section 2.6 states that:
In the case of charges secured against unregistered land, we will accept a receipt endorsed on the form of charge itself as proof of discharge.
If you have a complex casework query that:
head to our website for details of how to contact our expert Ask for Guidance team.
And finally, to obtain historic editions of the register, head to practice guide 11, section 7 for more information.
We welcome your comments about this blog in the comments below. Please note that we are unable to discuss individual cases through the comments section and would request that all such queries be directed to our Contact Us web form where you will receive a response as soon as possible.
This year, we are launching Caseworkers’ Top 10 tips for tip-top applications - quick checks or changes you can make that could more than halve the number of requisitions you receive.
In 2023, we raised 986,036 requisitions, 70% of which (695,380) boiled down to around 30 specific points. None involved a certificate or consent, but collectively they took us – and more importantly you, our customers – a huge amount of time and money to resolve.
Our caseworkers have put together 10 top tips to address some of the most common requisitions – simple points that punch above their weight in terms of delaying applications, but which are quick and easy to eliminate. Caseworkers say that if you follow these 10 top tips, you will avoid more than 20 very common requisition points.
We’ve assembled the 10 top tips into a collection of short, snappy videos and made them available on YouTube, as well as our Customer Training and HM Land Registry Essentials hubs. We will also be posting them on our social channels at regular intervals. And you are, of course, welcome to download any or all of them to use in your own in-house training.
We recognise, appreciate and value the excellent work many of our customers are putting in to submit clear, correct and complete applications – you can read more about this in our series of case studies on GOV.UK.
And while some of the tips might seem very basic – even obvious – we send a huge number of requisitions over these points. In 2023, we sent more than 84,000 in relation to missing information alone.
We are also keenly aware that what all of you, our customers, want from us more than anything else is better speed of service and an end to backlogs. We want this, too. And while of course we realise that reducing requisitions will not fix these issues, it will help.
This is a shared responsibility: we know we send requisitions that could have been avoided, and we are working hard to stop this happening. So, as you might expect, Top 10 tips are just one of many initiatives we’re introducing to tackle requisitions overall, which also include:
Among the improvements we’re focusing on to help customers - and especially staff new to conveyancing and post-completion teams, are:
Finally, our Top 10 tips don’t cover everything – after all, there are more than 1,500 standard requisition points – and they’re not designed for debating the nuances of land law. But they do include the simple points we see over and again. Getting those right first time will certainly save you plenty of time, money and frustration.
So, look out for our top 10 and, if you have any tried and tested tips to avoid a requisition, let us know. Wherever possible, we’ll share them, too.
You can find the tips on GOV.UK
General help in avoiding requisitions:
Guidance:
Webinars:
How to avoid requests for information
Checklist:
We welcome your comments about this blog in the comments below. Please note that we are unable to discuss individual cases through the comments section and would request that all such queries be directed to our Contact Us web form where you will receive a response as soon as possible.
As mentioned in our recent blogs, about what we’re doing to reduce our processing times and our plans for the future, we are exploring every avenue to improve our services to customers. This includes automating our services for updating registered titles, which makes up the majority of the work handled by our caseworkers.
To automate our services, we need to adjust how we receive and process applications. At the moment, our caseworkers check every application for errors or omissions before starting work on them. They often need to send out requests for information (requisitions). It’s essential to the integrity of the land register that these details are correct on the application. We need to remove this time-consuming step if we want faster, automated services.
We believe that most of the checks our caseworkers currently perform manually could be replaced, either because our digital applications services check the register before the application is submitted or because our application processing tools can check it once it’s been received. However, we also need assurance from customers – notably from those regulated lawyers or 'Regulated Legal Professionals' (RLPs) – on some other aspects. You may have heard this process referred to as 'Lawyer Assured Information' (LAI). For more on how this could help with our automation ambitions, please see our previous blog on ‘efficient land registration’.
We can only do this in partnership with industry – we need to know how different conveyancers work and how we could effectively change the way we all work. So, we’ve started with four high-volume firms: Enact, Eversheds Sutherland, Optima and O’Neill Patient. We have been working with these four firms because their high volumes provided enough example cases for us to quickly understand how things could work. We’ve been focussing on applications to register new charges, because they’re relatively simple to register, and they make up a sizable proportion of our work.
Through this initial pilot stage, we’ve learned a lot – both in terms of what works and what doesn’t – and we’ve seen some real benefits. As Claire Feehily-Loy from O’Neill Patient, a Movera company, has told us:
Our involvement with LAI was driven by the prospect of enhanced automation and quicker turn-around times for registration applications. The benefits we've experienced at O'Neill Patient, and our platform business Movera, have exceeded expectations.
Karen Hooper noted that Enact saw the same potential.
We were really keen to be involved with the LAI project given that increased automation and quicker registrations will ultimately be of significant benefit not only for our business, but also for our clients and customers.
If we’re going to automate more applications, we need to be confident that firms are not submitting applications with errors or omissions in them. We’re really looking at the avoidable, administrative errors, rather than things like third party consents which we all know take time to gather. And we’re really focussing on the more ‘serious’ of these, such as the signing of a deed or inclusion of the correct deed.
Claire Feehily-Loy again.
We receive thorough feedback and data on requisitions, enabling us to make significant improvements to our internal processes. Not only that, but we have been able to work closely with HMLR to shape the future of the process.
By working closely with all four firms we’ve seen a notable reduction in their requisition rates. And we’ve learned about some issues in our own policy that we could amend, including some technical aspects of how customers submit applications that inevitably lead to requisitions, and how these could be avoided.
Karen Hooper from Enact felt the same.
During the pilot, the ongoing feedback and iterative development discussions have proved to be invaluable in refining our internal processes, leading to faster registrations and even lower requisitions than usual.
When initially discussing this work, we were aware of concerns that it would allow firms to edit the land register unchecked. This will absolutely not happen; it is still HM Land Registry’s responsibility to decide what can and can’t be registered. We will not allow applications which do not pass fundamental ‘business rules’ – things which our caseworkers currently check for – to be added to the register.
The pilot – or ‘private beta’ - has allowed us to examine and test how we can best do this, through pre-registration checks and/or post-registration assurance processes. The details of how we do this are still being developed, but this principle remains central to our work.
By working with these high-volume firms, we have been able to explore some of the barriers they face, both legal and operational. Through regular discussions, we’ve learned in-depth detail of how they handle cases, and how we can work together to provide accurate applications while addressing anything that regularly leads to requisitions. We will now include a broader range of firms of different sizes, handling different amounts of cases, to ensure our approach works for everyone.
One notable change made after feedback is that our approach would leave it up to the individual RLP to choose how they obtain the confidence to assure their firm’s applications. This may, for example, be by checking each individual application. Or alternatively they may only need to check a sample of their firm’s applications, as they have enough confidence in the processes and assurance checks in place. Any steps taken by the RLP must give them a reasonable belief that each application being submitted to HM Land Registry is true and accurate.
And we’ve been able to address concerns, such as around the perceived shifting of liability. It is not our intention to change the relationship between HM Land Registry and our customers. This will not put any increased risk on personal financial liability on those assuring us of the applications’ quality, nor do we see any change in PI insurance.
We’ve also explored what training customers will need. While we’ve had the luxury of working directly with the four firms involved in the private beta, we have learned a lot about what guidance and support will need to be available when we open the work out to more firms.
On a more fundamental level, we’ve also learned how to make this work practically. How different customers submit applications to HM Land Registry, how they could technically provide assurance of each applications’ quality, and how this assurance is ‘stored’ within HM Land Registry. These more functional aspects are fundamental to this working in future, so we will continue to work with these firms and test our approach with a broader range of customers.
Claire Feehily-Loy noted that:
We acknowledge the challenges of aligning the role of Regulated Legal Professionals (RLPs) with our Movera powered automation and controlled processes, and we are actively collaborating with HMLR to find an optimal solution.
Karen Hooper agreed that this concept was also “not without its challenges” for Enact but went on to say:
We have been able to work collaboratively with HMLR on this point and have every confidence a mutually agreeable solution will be forthcoming based on our experience to date.
We are now reflecting on the feedback from the firms involved in this private beta and are bringing in a few more firms with different application types and volumes to advise on how this would work for them.
We do believe that automation is the future of land registration, bringing both faster and more sustainable services. This has been proven with our information services, which were largely immune to the recent fluctuation in the property market activity.
While we don’t imagine this will be available to all firms in the short term, we will continue to share information about our work as we gain more detail.
Please sign up for our early engagement group if you would like to receive direct emails around this work or become involved in upcoming research.
]]>Today (7 December) is Welsh Language Rights Day, an event organised by the Welsh Language Commissioner that gives organisations such as us an opportunity to promote our Welsh language services.
The theme of this year’s campaign is ‘Defnyddia dy Gymraeg’ or ‘Use your Welsh’. If you’re a Welsh speaker or learner, go ahead and use your Welsh with us!
HM Land Registry’s Welsh Language Scheme ensures we treat the English and Welsh languages equally. We are committed to making sure solicitors and members of the public can communicate with us in Welsh, if they choose to.
We have a dedicated team of caseworkers who are fluent in Welsh and who welcome correspondence and applications submitted in the language.
Applications or correspondence in Welsh can be emailed directly to our Welsh language team at: GwasanaethCymraeg@landregistry.gov.uk
Here’s a short video about the service offered by our Welsh language team.
The register template of every title in Wales is produced in bilingual format. The headings and standard information appear in English and Welsh, and the register entries appear in the language of the document on which they are based.
The following services on GOV.UK are available in Welsh:
Search for land and property information
Search for local land charges on land and property
We have a Welsh language line for general enquiries: 0300 006 0422. Anyone who receives correspondence or notices in English can request a version in Welsh if they prefer.
A Welsh version of LLC Maintain, which enables local and other authorities to register new local land charges and amend existing charges in our register, is also available.
Many of HM Land Registry’s pages on GOV.UK are available in Welsh. They include:
HM Land Registry statutory forms
HM Land Registry practice guides
Information about HM Land Registry fees
Monthly UK House Price Index reports
Information on the Local Land Charges Programme
Our HM Land Registry glossary of legal terms has been useful to solicitors and members of the public who correspond with us in Welsh.
You can view other GOV.UK pages available in Welsh by selecting the ‘Cymraeg’ tab located in the top right-hand corner of the page.
Our aim is to continue to further the commitments in our Welsh Language Scheme to ensure our services take account of Welsh-language requirements where appropriate.
Providing services in Welsh is important, but Welsh speakers need to use them to demonstrate their value.
You can help spread the word by informing your colleagues and clients of these services and encouraging their use.
More information about HM Land Registry’s Welsh language services is available on GOV.UK.
We welcome your comments about this blog in the comments below. Please note that we are unable to discuss individual cases through the comments section and would request that all such queries be directed to our Contact Us web form where you will receive a response as soon as possible.
This week sees the return of International Fraud Awareness Week, launched in 2000 by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, when hundreds of organisations across the world come together to raise awareness and encourage people to guard against fraud.
Fraud costs the UK nearly £7 billion a year, accounting for more than 40% of crime, so earlier this year the Government launched a new Fraud Strategy, introducing a range of measures aimed at driving this figure down.
At HM Land Registry we work hard to combat property fraud, which happens when criminals target the most vulnerable properties or property owners in our society.
This type of fraud can deprive people of their homes, lose them hundreds of thousands of pounds and have a seriously detrimental impact on their lives, often before they realise what is happening.
When a criminal steals a property owner's identity and uses it to make an application to HM Land Registry to register, for example, a forged transfer or mortgage deed, this is officially known as ‘registered title fraud’.
Over the past five years, HM Land Registry has prevented registered title fraud against more than £100 million of property, through a combination of detection, prevention and education.
However, fraudsters targeting the properties of both individuals and companies continue to pose a threat to property owners and conveyancers, as they look to exploit any real or perceived weakness in the system.
It is worth remembering, too, that fraud methods vary and continually evolve, so we all need to be vigilant and look out for anything that seems unusual or suspicious.
If a registered title fraud has been committed, the Land Registration Act 2002 sets out when a mistake in the register can be put right, and when it cannot.
This is underpinned by a scheme to compensate those who suffer loss because of a mistake in the register, whether or not it is corrected.
Depending on the circumstances, the defrauded proprietor may not regain ownership of the property, so prevention should always be the number one priority.
Owners can apply to enter a ‘Form LL restriction’ in the property title register. This is designed to help prevent the type of fraud where a fraudster obtains identity documents in the registered property owner’s name and then uses them to persuade a buyer or lender that they are the true owner of the property.
Typically, they might be a tenant with access to the property or some other trusted person.
To sell or mortgage the property, the fraudster has to obtain a certificate from a conveyancer in order to comply with the Form LL restriction in the register.
The Form LL restriction can deter fraudsters from targeting a property because they will first have to convince the conveyancer that they are indeed the true owners.
It is not a mandatory requirement when you buy a property, and your legal advisor may or may not raise it with you during the conveyancing process, but if you have this restriction in place, you could stop a fraudster from selling your property without your knowledge.
However, you should also be aware that having this restriction in your register can slow down the process of selling, leasing or mortgaging your property because you’ll need to address extra steps, which can take some time to resolve.
Find out more at property fraud - HM Land Registry (blog.gov.uk) or watch our video, Form LL – the 'counter-fraud' restriction.
Property Alert is another preventative measure you can take which is well worth considering.
HM Land Registry’s Property Alert service currently has more than 1.25 million active alerts protecting properties across England and Wales and giving their owners greater peace of mind.
By signing up for this free service, you will be notified of certain types of activity on the register in relation to your property, which you can rapidly respond to if necessary.
You don’t have to be the property owner to set up an alert; you might want to keep an eye on a friend or relative’s house, or simply want to know if someone is interested in buying it. And it is not limited to just one address: you can monitor up to 10 properties.
It takes just a few minutes to set up an account. Sign up at Property Alert service and enter the required details. You’ll find some great pointers here: 5 top tips to keep your property safe.
For anyone who thinks they may have been the victim of property fraud, HM Land Registry operates a dedicated property fraud line for you to report any concerns. Please call us on 0300 006 7030 (Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm).
So why not sign up to our Property Alert service during Fraud Awareness Week and help protect your property?
]]>Property technology (PropTech) provider adoor joined the Geovation Accelerator Programme in October 2020 – a programme backed by HM Land Registry and Ordnance Survey which provides geospatial and PropTech start-ups with grant funding and 12 months of support.
Currently, transactions take over 151 days on average to complete and nearly half of transactions fell through in the first quarter of 2023. Conveyancers and estate agents are battling higher caseloads, with more enquiries, meaning they have less time to complete tasks.
We’ve built adoor to help buyers, sellers, conveyancers and estate agents track the progress of property transactions from mortgage to moving day, whenever works for them.
By enabling everyone to see the entire chain in one place online, we have seen users save up to seven hours per week in reduced admin. We’ve also seen fall-throughs reduce to almost zero with greater clarity and transparency made possible by tracking the chain in one place.
We provide proactive notifications on upcoming tasks and give everyone the same view on progress. This reduces the need for chasing calls as you can see the next stage and its due date across the entire chain of transactions. Connecting services such as identity verification, anti-money laundering checks and property searches all within the adoor platform also saves time.
We use HM Land Registry’s title numbers to validate each property on adoor and to get the title deeds. We also reference the UK House Price Index and Price Paid Data to track the trend of house sales and prices. The data from HM Land Registry is then combined with property data provided by property professionals, alongside the automated data we provide for the Energy Performance Certificate and the council tax band. We also work with Veya to show their title insights and risk scores that help property professionals focus enquiries and to give a heads up of potential issues, ultimately reducing fall-throughs and speeding up transactions.
We joined the Geovation Accelerator Programme in October 2020. Having access to this network and community during the peak of the COVID pandemic was especially helpful. Members of the Geovation team challenged our assumptions to craft a product that truly solves a problem. In addition, introductions to people within the industry helped us to get vital feedback, enabling us to improve the service before launch.
For a small team of three, we’ve already achieved a lot! Most importantly, we have powerful partnerships with LEAP, Thirdfort, Veya, Search Acumen, AnyVan and Rhino Home Protect.
Our partnerships have allowed us to create a central platform for property data and updates which was previously siloed between different systems and stakeholders. This data is infinitely more useful when shared - conveyancers can be instructed sooner and complete enquiries faster with the upfront property information collected, meaning there is less of a delay after the offer has been accepted. Estate agents can also track progress in the same place.
By bringing everything onto one platform, there is no need to waste time finding folders, remembering passwords or having too many tabs open! We also hope to see this reduce the stress levels for property professionals.
We’re about to announce our partnership with Just Move In – the home moving experts, handling removals and changing your utilities.
We’re implementing version 2 of the BASPI (Buying and Selling Property Information) form created by the Home Buying and Selling Group. This aligns to the Property Data Trust Framework that standardises the format property data is shared in. Collecting this upfront property information helps to speed up property transactions by up to four weeks and reduces fall-throughs significantly as potential buyers know more at the point of making an offer.
We’re continuing to develop our system with more integrations with case management systems and fellow PropTech providers, most recently with fellow Geovation alumni Veya.
We will continue to collaborate with industry bodies and clients to refine and develop new features in our quest to make moving home easier for all.
]]>If you’ve just bought a property and you look at Zoopla or Rightmove – or even HM Land Registry's own service – you may be surprised to see that your name and the price paid hasn’t been added to your official property record yet. In the vast majority of cases, you do not need to worry about this. There are a few specific cases (explained below), where HM Land Registry registrations could potentially cause owners an issue but, even then, there is a simple – and free – solution available.
Normally, no problems arise from properties not being registered to their new owners yet. This is because registration happens after the property is sold – usually after completion and collection of the keys, and after Stamp Duty or Land Transaction Tax (if applicable) has been paid. The sale is legal, the new owner can move in, and the property is theirs. Their legal rights are protected in the Land Register the moment we receive the new application, not from the day we actually register it which will be some time later because the sale needs to happen first.
HM Land Registry plays a key role in the property market, providing an official record of all property ownership and the financial loans (normally mortgages) against all property in England and Wales. This provides assurance for further money lending, and so keeps the property market running. Without this, the property market would simply stop.
Most people probably don’t even know about HM Land Registry until they see the line on their conveyancer’s itemised bill. Or possibly when they receive a form to sign, with witnesses, to agree to the sale of the property with our logo at the top. They may also use platforms such as Rightmove but not realise the data’s sourced from us.
Before a property is sold, we provide information about the ownership of that property. We currently provide that information within three working days, mainly because this service is largely automated.
After a property sale, we register the new owners’ details and any mortgage they have. The sale is legal, the new owner can move in, host house-warming parties or start any renovations they want. The property is legally theirs from the moment we receive the application which we will then start processing.
To see the current timescales for processing applications, you can check our current processing times on GOV.UK. It’s worth repeating that the owners’ ‘interest’ in the property is legally protected from the moment we receive the application, not the later date when we finish processing it and update the register.
There are a few specific cases where HM Land Registry registrations could potentially cause owners an issue but, even then, there is a simple – and free – solution available: our fast-track service.
If someone buys a property and then decides to remortgage or sell it just a short while later, their registration may not have been completed yet, meaning they cannot sell or remortgage the property. This does not happen very often but, when it does, the applicant can request that their application is fast tracked and moved to the front of our queues (we call this 'expediting'). This is an extremely successful service, with over 95% of cases processed within 10 working days allowing them to continue with their sale or remortgage. It is also free of charge.
The other area which can potentially cause issues is registering a property for the first time – perhaps if it’s an old house or part of a new build development. We’re seeing some longer registration delays here, as these tend to be more complex applications that require more detailed mapping and often need us to ask applicants for more details to ensure we get the precise aspects of ownership correct. In fact, two thirds of these ‘complex’ applications need some clarifying, which can cause delays.
So, if you have bought an older house, or a new build, and are thinking about refinancing or remortgaging, it would be worth checking the registration details and, if necessary, requesting our fast-track service to bring our records up to date with your ownership.
So, if a delay in registration is causing problems, whether legal, financial or personal, our criteria for fast tracking are met. Remember, there is no additional charge from HM Land Registry to use this service – it is free.
This is a simplified account of our work. Land registration and property law can be incredibly complex. However, it covers the vast majority of property sales. Inevitably, there will be some cases which take a little longer, or face particular issues. If you have any concerns about these affecting you, we would encourage you to contact us.
There is no reason that your property transaction should be affected by any processing delays at HM Land Registry.
However, if you think your plans might be affected by your property not being registered yet, please request an expedite. This free service is helping thousands of people each month to do things such as move home, change their registered names after marriage or divorce, or manage a property after a bereavement.
As long as the application has been submitted to us, any delays in registering the property aren’t anything to worry about. This doesn’t mean however that we’re not always working to reduce the time between receiving an application and registration.
For more information about what we’re doing to improve our speed of service for customers, including hiring over 1,500 new caseworkers, please read our recent blog on measures to help our customers.
If you’re interested in learning more about our role in the conveyancing process, you can also watch our recently published video aimed at supporting new conveyancers.
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