The causes of conveyancing delays are often discussed in Property Industry Eye.

One cause, not often aired, is the existence of entries on property titles which make no sense in the 21st century.

I recently received the two emails below:

“I’m dealing with a property in Hemyock, Devon, and the title is subject to payment of an annual sum to the Poor of Hemyock – are there any Bold Legal Group members familiar with this entry and if so how did they deal with it?” BLG Member

“I act for the proposed purchaser of a property with the following entry on the title:-

The land is either freehold or partly freehold and partly leasehold intermixed and indistinguishable. The Leasehold parts are held for the unexpired residue of a term of 531 years created by a lease dated the 16 of May in the 2nd and 3rd years of the reign of King Philip and Queen Mary.

NOTE: No copy or abstract of this Lease is filed.

Has anyone seen this entry before and resolved the issue to the satisfaction of their client and the lender?” BLG Member

I run the Bold Legal Group (BLG) a nationwide network of 700 law firms. All of them, individually, carry out a significant amount of residential conveyancing. In fact the 700 together carry out over 35% of all residential property transactions annually.

One of the benefits of being a BLG member is to be able to share and help resolve conveyancing, property and land law issues.

Hopefully, during the course of this week, some of the other BLG members will come forward with their thoughts comments and possible solutions on the two issues above.

Title issues like these crop up more often than one would imagine. Satisfying the purchaser client and the client’s lender can be time consuming, delaying and often costly.

The purchasing of legal indemnity insurance policies regularly being the fall back solution.

Wouldn’t it make more sense if antiquated and sometimes nonsensical entries like these were improved (clarified) or preferably removed by HMLR? I’m not sure what the process would be, or even if a practical one already exists. If it does, it isn’t used on a regular basis.

The Government is currently looking at Improving the Home Buying and Selling Process and there is currently some good work going on behind the scenes in this regard.

However, improving/removing entries like the two above doesn’t appear yet to be on the agenda.

Maybe it should be?

* By coincidence, EYE once bought and sold a property in Hemyock, Devon. We do not recall the annual sum ‘to the poor’ mentioned. However, the property we bought did include an outbuilding with baptising facilities