I’ve been surprised at the number of titles that our team has been asked to register in recent months. Registration of land began as long ago as the 1860s, but only in very limited circumstances and on a voluntary basis.
The Land Registration Act 1925 sought to extend registration, but it didn’t immediately apply to all areas of the country or all types of land transactions. In fact, registration only became compulsory across the board from December 1990.
Registration is only compulsory as and when a registerable transaction occurs. There is no requirement for anyone with an unregistered title to attend to its registration if there is no underlying transaction, although it is possible to voluntarily register your title.
By September 2019 the Land Registry confirmed that 87% of England and Wales has a registered title – there were 26 million registered titles at that time. There will have been more unregistered land added to the registers since then, but that still leaves well over 10% of the country with unregistered titles.
Our team has been involved in what seems to be a high number of first registrations recently, which is a positive step forward. In most of those cases, there hasn’t been an underlying transaction.
In some cases, it has come to light that there is a potential title issue, so the registration has been undertaken to rectify the issues ready for when a sale or other transaction is required. It is always best to have a clean title to present to another party’s solicitor as it saves time during the transaction itself.
If you think that you have a title issue, ask your solicitor to have a look at your deeds. They will be able to confirm if there is, and can help you to resolve it and get your title registered at the same time. There is nothing worse than agreeing to a sale or purchase, then finding that there are huge delays whilst the solicitors resolve the title issues. It is worth planning ahead to ensure that the transaction runs as smoothly as possible and any hiccups won’t be down to title issues.
On more than one occasion, I have experienced issues when selling properties with unregistered titles. The problem each time was that the solicitor or conveyancer acting for the buyer didn’t want to consider an unregistered title. This will become more of an issues as the years go by. Because of the decreasing number of unregistered titles, some legal professionals will never have come across one, or may only do so on rare occasions. Unregistered titles are often cumbersome with large bundles of documents to consider.
Whilst I don’t agree with legal professionals refusing to deal with unregistered titles just because they don’t have the experience to do so, this is an issue which arises from time to time and having your title registered in advance of any transaction could prevent this problem impacting upon your transaction.
We’ve also been asked to register titles for clients who are concerned about property fraud. I posted a comment on LinkedIn a couple of months ago about a story in the news which highlighted the issues of property fraud – https://bit.ly/3gnNsjO . The Land Registry recommends registering titles to minimise potential frauds. Whilst your title being registered is no guarantee that someone won’t commit fraud which affects your property, it will make it more difficult for them to do so.
The Land Registry would like to achieve comprehensive registration by 2030, but that isn’t very far away. They are working with public bodies to try to get as much public land and property registered as possible by that date, but that will still leave many private properties unregistered.
It is likely that the unregistered land and property has been in the same ownership for decades. In time, there will be a change of ownership in many cases and the land will ultimately have to be registered. But what about property which is held by companies and which hasn’t been subject to any transactions which trigger registration. That may well remain the case for decades to come and that land will remain unregistered unless an until there is a registerable transaction or the owner applies to voluntarily register the title.
For anyone concerned about the cost of registering the title, the Land Registry does offer reduced fees for voluntary registration. In addition, if the registration prevents other issues arising during the course of any dealings with the land it is likely to save legal costs overall too – the cost of dealing with the problem during a live transaction may well be more than if you were dealing with it whilst you have time to do so.
There are many reasons why owners of land and property which currently has an unregistered title should consider registration. If you would like more information on this, please do contact someone from our team on 01642 356500/0191 2322574.
Nicola Neilson, Partner and head of Agricultural Property
