Land Registry / House Purchase Query

Dear Free Conveyancing Advice,

I am in the process of purchasing a house with an unregistered title. The house is on a corner plot of land, part of which (the land to the side of the house) is being sold separately to a developer. Neither our purchase of the house, nor the developers purchase of the land has yet completed, but both are close. Our solicitors and the sellers solicitors can't agree of the process of the transfer forms to complete our sale, and I am considering switching solicitor in order to progress the sale faster. Our solicitor states that the land sale (which has exchanged and has a completion date) should use a TP1 form to register the part of the land they are buying. Our sale would then have to wait until that land is registered, before our solicitor submits a TR1 form to purchase the whole of the remaining title. Our solicitor has advised that without this order we could inadvertently purchase the whole title (if for example the land sale fell through or their registration was rejected by land registry) which we would then have to sort out ourselves after the sale. Our solicitors insistence on this order is likely to cause at least 2 months delay, for which I don't have a problem IF it is to protect us from a real risk of issues later on. However, I have spoken to land registry and a chartered surveyor colleague who both say both pieces of land can be registered simultaneously without issue. However, obviously neither of the above have 'legal' experience and so I am not sure if my solicitor has a genuine point or not.

I am interested in another legal opinion if the registration of our house should wait until the adjacent land is registered?

Many thanks

Robert Williams

1 Answers

Your solicitor does have a point, it is a tricky situation. When faced with a similar issue in the past I took two steps. First, attach a plan to the TR1 for the land you are buying and outline on that plan the extent you are buying. This way if your application for registration somehow gets priority over the other one the land registry will either just register in your favour the extent of the land on the plan (their approach in odd cases like these can be inconsistent) or they will raise a requisition saying they cannot proceed as you need to use TP1. So the second thing is to ask the seller to supply a signed TP1 in your favour. That way if they reject the TR1 with plan attached you can use the TP1. Instead. All that said, remember that a) your lawyer knows the full facts of the case and I don't and b) if you go against his advice and something goes wrong you may not be protected, so think carefully before opting to reject his advice