HM Land Registry has made available its authoritative data on Registered Leases and Restrictive Covenants across England and Wales.
The datasets, which will be available through HM Land Registry’s new Use land and property data service, mark a big step in realising the wider economic potential in HM Land Registry’s data, while enabling innovation in property related industries.
The Registered Leases dataset catalogues all registered leases, providing a new level of insight on property ownership for buyers, valuations and planners.
Restrictive Covenants data will provide upfront information to house buyers on some 17 million existing covenants affecting properties, across England and Wales.
Both datasets will be published under a range of licences through the newly developed online data hub hosting HM Land Registry’s full complement of available data with improved accessibility, electronic licencing, and full API integration.
The licences include free-to-use terms for personal and research uses, a commercial licence for business use, and an ‘exploration licence’ tailored to foster the development of new and emerging products and services.
Dr. Andrew Trigg, Interim Director of Digital, Data and Technology at HM Land Registry’s comments:
“We’re hugely excited to be in a position to launch these two datasets.
“We know that there’s appetite and utility for this information in property related industries and look forward to seeing how it can positively impact the conveyancing process.
“Beyond this, we’re intrigued to see what novel innovations find their way out of the UK’s burgeoning PropTech space to make their mark on our digital economy.”
It’s interesting that this story is in the ‘relegation zone of hardly reads’- a page filler almost and Dr.Trigg doesn’t know what innovation it will lead to.
Both say we know this is a something but we don’t know what. I have been literally waiting years for this data set to be made conveniently available and know it will probably have as much impact and consequence as PMA 1991.
All of a sudden ‘material facts’ aren’t something that can’t be omitted from sales particulars, [the CPR requirement to include information that might affect a purchase] What most people will not realise is the implication of that on agent’s details and portal advertising. Agents who leave it off will have a problem from increasingly vocal (rightly so) leasehold campaign groups such as @NLC_2019 who are lobbying for change in all things connected with mis-sold leases,escalating ground rents, monopoly management fees flammable claddings etc.
Any agent who isn’t on top of this information was already in trouble but now there is no excuse for not having the information available and displayed will now find the heat turned up to max.
There is a downside for NLC campaigners a lot of properties could face a difficulty finding an agent to list them; a fee on completion agent will look hard at taking on properties that will never complete because of issues with; the lease, compounding service charges or flammable claddings so while on one hand this is good news for consumers looking to buy it has just exacerbated the issues of those with something to sell.
As for the innovation that’s already been done, imagine that!
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It’s probably worth mentioning that agents who take on listings for a fee irrespective of whether a property sells or not – the passive intermediary industry should be prohibited from taking a fee or entering a contract to take a fee from any vendor who might not ultimately be able to sell their property for any of the factors connected with their lease, management of their lease or material factors such as flammable claddings.
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I think the Leasehold data in particular is a great idea. However a commercial licence to use the data cost £5k + Vat a year. (Non commercial is free)
The National Polygon dataset, which allows you to map Land Registry titles, is £20k + Vat a year.
So possibly some smaller Proptech companies are going to be priced out …which is a shame.
Personally I would love to access the National Polygon Dataset but at that price its a non starter…
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What would also be useful is a faster release of sold price data.
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