Lawyers for Transferring Part of Registered Land Title

This service is for the registration of a transfer of part of a registered title, and handling any financial transfers entailed.

England and Wales enjoys a world-leading land registration system by which, for over a century, increasingly large parts of England & Wales have been subject to “Compulsory first registration”; this means anyone buying unregistered property in an area of compulsory registration has also had to apply for their title to be registered with HM Land Registry. The whole of England and Wales has been subject to compulsory first registration for the last 30 years or so. In 2021 H.M. Land Registry contained more than 25 million property titles, evidencing the ownership for more than 87% of the land mass of England and Wales. It is increasingly rare to encounter property that is unregistered. The rules, processes and laws that apply between registered and unregistered land can be quite different.

The Land Register is public – anyone can inspect the register for the information it contains. Conveyancing professionals, such as ourselves, have unique access to industry tools that enable us to access the register easily.

Each registered land title includes a plan of the land that title contains – the plan might show thousands of acres of land (e.g. in wild moor country), or just a few square feet (e.g. in built-up conurbations).

Normally the divisions within the Register reflect divisions on the ground, such that most of the time the whole of a registered title is dealt with in one transaction. Some transactions might encompass the whole of several adjacent whole titles.

However, occasionally land owners wish to split an existing registered title by transferring part-only of a larger registered title, and retaining the rest – for example when splitting land off to sell for development.

The price quoted for the basic service does not include any of:

1. Preparation of a Land Registry compliant plan

2. Removal of registered charges from the land transferred

3. Negotiation, reporting, or certifying title

These elements would be individually charged, extra, as they might arise.

We don’t generally do anything for new clients until our process of client retention has concluded – this involves agreeing the scope of what we are doing for the price (our terms are below), setting-up our client record (that includes ID checks), and producing the bill (payment in advance is required for all new clients).

After that, the production of the transfer is a job that we can undertake in about an hour once we can schedule it in our workflow, that can depend on how busy we are at any particular time. We would not usually take-on a job for which we could not engage within about a working week.

A completed transfer will then need to be submitted to HM Land Registry for registration. The time HM Land Registry take to process such a registration varies greatly, depending on how busy they are. Some applications are processed very quickly, up to “next day”; however, most applications appear to languish awaiting HM Land Registry attention; in 2021 many applications were taking about 6 months to be registered – and some types of application can take even longer than that, unfortunately. However, once submitted HM Land Registry process applications on any title in order of submission – so their delay ought not to affect the priority of your application relative to other matters on that title.

Your supplier is CLC-regulated Mounteney Conveyancers, that charges VAT some customers may be able to reclaim

For the basic transfer we charge £500 + VAT = £600

For producing a plan we charge an additional : £275 + VAT = £330

For removing a charge on the title we charge an additional: £125 + VAT = £150

There is more about our fees on our website here

If you have any questions, require any further information, or would like to engage us on the T&Cs linked Our Terms in the footer below, please don’t hesitate to Contact Us.