The Practical Lawyer

What happens if a notice is served on someone who is dead? The answer depends on whether or not the person serving the notice knows that the intended recipient has died.  

The Law Society and LR have issued a joint note on property and title fraud.  

The LR is tightening its criteria for rejecting applications for first registration (whether freehold or leasehold).

If a right of pre-emption (ie a right to buy) does not specifically say that it can be protected at the LR by registration of a restriction, then it is still possible to enter a notice at the LR. However, the UT has now held that it is also possible to enter a restriction (in addition to the notice), even if the agreement does not expressly provide for that, or expressly limited the owner’s powers to make a disposition.

A reminder of the basics when replying to standard enquiries:

We all know that a buyer who makes misrepresentations in replies to Standard Enquiries can be liable. But, what advice should you give to a buyer who discovers that something is wrong just before the contractual completion date? For instance, suppose the seller of a commercial property has wrongly said that there were no service charge disputes, and the buyer discovers – before completion – that there have indeed been disputes. What should the buyer do?

Anyone involved in a shared ownership purchase should understand that the SDLT calculations can be a nightmare. Different considerations arise depending on whether it is (i) the grant of a new lease, or (ii) the assignment of an existing lease, and/or (iii) the purchase of additional shares by staircasing. 

Both the Standard Conditions of Sale and the Standard Commercial Property Conditions state that the time for completion of the contract is not ‘of the essence’, unless a ten-day notice to complete has been served.

A private individual can guard against property fraud (through impersonation) by applying for the entry of a restriction on the title in Form LL. The effect of this is that if a document is submitted for registration, then a conveyancer’s certificate must be supplied showing that the person who executed the document was indeed the proprietor.

The ‘registration gap’ is the period between the transfer/completion of a property transaction, and the registration of that transaction at the LR. The danger is that an unregistered interest may be registered in that gap (although that will obviously not be possible if the registration is done in a timely way, within the priority period).