What Happens When You’re Selling Unregistered Land Or Property?
If your property or land is not registered, the title to the property relies on paper deeds that have been handed down from previous owners. Each deed will have been added to every time the property changed hands, which is why there are often numerous deeds and the deeds can have plans that seemingly don’t correlate with the existing buildings or land. When your land is registered, all the important information of all the deeds is written within the one document, enabling the conveyancer to establish who the current owners are and their status, purely by looking at the title supplied by the Land Registry. The conveyancer should have experience of dealing with unregistered land and know what to do. While every transaction is unique, as a guide, the following will need to be done in order to sell unregistered land or property:- Plans checked with Land Registry using the new MapSearch together with an Index Map Search of the land
- The Epitome or Abstract of Title provided to the seller’s solicitor will contain copies of all the deeds, which need to be checked
- Every document needs to be checked from a minimum of 15 years from the current date, to make sure there is a clear chain of title from then until now
- Checks include any information that would be on the Register, including bankruptcy, marriage changes, stamp duty paid, and whether the title is free from defects
- Paper title deeds prove ownership and the seller’s title would need to be thoroughly investigated during the conveyancing process