This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Learn more

LPC Law Notes Property Law and Practice Notes

Unregistered Titles Notes

Updated Unregistered Titles Notes

Property Law and Practice Notes

Property Law and Practice

Approximately 490 pages

A collection of the best LPC PLP notes the director of Oxbridge Notes (an Oxford law graduate) could find after combing through dozens of LPC samples from outstanding students with the highest results in England and carefully evaluating each on accuracy, formatting, logical structure, spelling/grammar, conciseness and "wow-factor".

In short these are what we believe to be the strongest set of PLP notes available in the UK this year. This collection of notes is fully updated for recent exams, a...

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Property Law and Practice Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

Unregistered Titles

Investigations

When investigating registered title remember SCRAPPED.

Searches

A number of searches must be carried out.

CLC Searches

CLC searches should be completed against all full names of all estate owners for the period of time they owned the property. If there is no definitive start date the earliest search date will be 1926. Beware of different names (i.e. common mistakes and previous surnames when marrying).

Company Search

Company Searches should be carried out against previous company sellers to make sure they owned the property and that they are solvent.

Index Map Search

An Index Map Search will be carried out over the land being purchased and the surrounding land to establish the boundaries of the land and identify the neighbouring properties.

Co-Ownership

Owner Dates of Ownership
X 1926 - ?
Y ? - ?
Z ? - 2015

If the property is co-owned and one of the co-owners has died then this can cause issues.

If the property was owned by Joint Tenants then the principle of survivorship applies, this means that the remaining Tenant can sell on their own. The joint tenancy will be severed if there is a bankruptcy order against one of the parties or a memorandum of severance exists.

If the property was owned by Tenants in Common (or if a joint tenancy has been severed), the principle of survivorship does not apply. In this case the remaining Tenant will need to appoint a second trustee to override the deceased Tenant’s rights. It will be the remaining Tenant’s duty to ensure the purchase monies go to the deceased’s estate.

Root of Title

There must be good root of title in order for the property to be sold. There are 4 factors which indicate a good root of title:

The conveyance must be at least 15 years old and signed before 1 December 1990. On this date land became compulsorily registrable. If the conveyance is dated post 1 December 1990 the property should have been registered and the property will need to be registered prior to it being sold to the buyer.

The conveyance must clearly identify the property and can refer to previous conveyances for the description or plan of the property.

The conveyance must deal with legal and equitable interests.

The conveyance must cast no doubt as to the seller’s title.

Ad Valorem Stamp Duty

The conveyance should have an Ad Valorum Stamp to show that stamp duty was paid. If the conveyance does not have this then it must have a certificate of value (i.e. stating that there is no stamp duty to be paid) and a PD stamp.

If the document does not have any of the above then the seller must rectify this so that the document can be relied upon in court as evidence (if required in the future).

Personal Representatives or Other Sellers

If the land is not being sold by the original owners and is being...

Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Property Law and Practice Notes.

More Property Law And Practice Samples