Land Registry

[Funkydrummer]

Anyone any experience recently ?

Bought our current house in November last year, no mortgage and am still waiting for the land registry to finalise the matter.

Solicitors are telling me that it's just the way it is these days. It just seems a long time. I worked in property all my life and never, ever experienced a delay like this.

Any comments would gratefully received.

[ElectroClaret]

Anyone any experience recently ?

Bought our current house in November last year, no mortgage and am still waiting for the land registry to finalise the matter.

Solicitors are telling me that it's just the way it is these days. It just seems a long time. I worked in property all my life and never, ever experienced a delay like this.

Any comments would gratefully received.

That does seem like an interminably long time, Fd.
I moved in May having started the conveyancing process in late January. So around 13 weeks to completion. Fortunately, things went relatively smoothly.
I'd keep pestering your brief.

Have you not actually completed yet?

[Jakubclaret]

Just sold 2 completed in 3 months give or take a odd week the land registry side was slow I used foleys in accrington & the hold up was from the buying sides solicitors. It shouldn't take that long. You need to find out precisely where they are at & question why things are taking so long.

[Yorkshirelad]

Made an application on 21/1/25 expected completion was May now August !!!!

Rang and chased the other day and basically told that's just how it is we have a backlog.

Asked if they could give me an expected time scale they No.

I questioned surely they must know where I'm in the queue and how many they are doing a month so they must have a idea of how much longer they said 'No"

Rubbish

[Funkydrummer]

That does seem like an interminably long time, Fd.
I moved in May having started the conveyancing process in late January. So around 13 weeks to completion. Fortunately, things went relatively smoothly.
I'd keep pestering your brief.

Have you not actually completed yet?

Yeah, completed back in November believe it or not !!!! Gonna chase the solicitors again today, but just wondered if anyone else is having/ has had the same experience.

Thanks for the reply.

[RicardoMontalban]

Anyone any experience recently ?

Bought our current house in November last year, no mortgage and am still waiting for the land registry to finalise the matter.

Solicitors are telling me that it's just the way it is these days. It just seems a long time. I worked in property all my life and never, ever experienced a delay like this.

Any comments would gratefully received.

Land reg takes forever these days, but they seem to be going for a record with that one! If you search the property on the website and click the option for request official copies there should be a note stating there is an update pending on the title in question. That’ll at least show it’s in progress.

[dougcollins]

Regardless of the continually negative media hype, a lot of the Civil Service is hopelessly understaffed.

You get the service you pay for.

[Big Vinny K]

Anyone any experience recently ?

Bought our current house in November last year, no mortgage and am still waiting for the land registry to finalise the matter.

Solicitors are telling me that it's just the way it is these days. It just seems a long time. I worked in property all my life and never, ever experienced a delay like this.

Any comments would gratefully received.

That’s pretty normal timescales at the moment.
Part of the delay is that there is a big piece of work underway with ordinance survey and trying to make sure that titles, boundaries etc are much more accurately defined than the historical records we have now. This involves the ordinance people coming out to land that is being registered to measure and draw these up (obviously also leads to queries, parties needing to agree etc)

Some land registrations can be expedited but normal domestic house sales are lower priority. Might be frustrating but it’s not an issue for you. If for some reason you had to sell the house then that would classify for expediting and then it would be weeks not months.

[AfloatinClaret]

Regardless of the continually negative media hype, a lot of the Civil Service is hopelessly understaffed.

You get the service you pay for.

Do we? It feels as if most (all?) civil service departments moved over to home working during Covid, resulting in a substantial fall in productivity. But with that now behind us, a large proportion of civil service employees continue to work from home and pre-covid productivity levels have never recovered and at an additional cost too, with'expenses' being paid for said commuting-cost saving employees to use their own homes. Tome it appears that nowadays we're getting less than we're paying for.

[Cardclaret]

We were told deeds currently take 6 to 12 months to come thru after a sale.

[lakesider]

Given the size of the land Registry office in Lytham/Warton, you would expect to see traffic coming on and off the main road there. I don't think I've ever seen a car waiting to turn into said office or out of. Kind of supports the covid/working from home argument.

[beddie]

Give the LR a ring and ask them to look it up on their system rather than be told “we have a back log” at that point ask them to expedite it.

[dougcollins]

Do we? It feels as if most (all?) civil service departments moved over to home working during Covid, resulting in a substantial fall in productivity. But with that now behind us, a large proportion of civil service employees continue to work from home and pre-covid productivity levels have never recovered and at an additional cost too, with'expenses' being paid for said commuting-cost saving employees to use their own homes. Tome it appears that nowadays we're getting less than we're paying for.

It suits the media to feed you that crap, just don't believe everything you're told.

And no, I'm not a Govt employee, far from it.

[BobSykes]

We were told deeds currently take 6 to 12 months to come thru after a sale.

We were also told up to 12 months. I questioned that with the conveyancer we'd used and said surely that's a typo, you meant 12 weeks not months, and they said no, months.

We're 4 months in on our wait.

[Boss Hogg]

Extremely slow and have been since Covid which they’ve been using as an excuse for the last few years. Public sector inefficiency with people ‘working ‘from hone.

[Bosscat]

Anyone any experience recently ?

Bought our current house in November last year, no mortgage and am still waiting for the land registry to finalise the matter.

Solicitors are telling me that it's just the way it is these days. It just seems a long time. I worked in property all my life and never, ever experienced a delay like this.

Any comments would gratefully received.

We have been gardening a plot at the top of our garden (between us and the railway) for nigh on 30 years as have all the houses from us to the end of our road.... we applied through our solicitors a couple of yrs ago to put it on our deeds as it was unclaimed land ... Land registry were supposed to be coming out to look at it to finalise it ... Still nowt sorted

[Lakeland Claret]

Extremely slow and have been since Covid which they’ve been using as an excuse for the last few years. Public sector inefficiency with people ‘working ‘from hone.

Public sector worker here . Probably more process and problems with that than people working from home being the issue . However a lot of organisations come under that title " public sector " so hard to speak for all of them .

[Billyblah]

Do we? It feels as if most (all?) civil service departments moved over to home working during Covid, resulting in a substantial fall in productivity. But with that now behind us, a large proportion of civil service employees continue to work from home and pre-covid productivity levels have never recovered and at an additional cost too, with'expenses' being paid for said commuting-cost saving employees to use their own homes. Tome it appears that nowadays we're getting less than we're paying for.

Hmmmm, too many people reading right wing bilge and taking it all in...but yes, we're probably paying even more and getting less.
We've been getting less since 2012 with the Cameron/Clegg coalition. Public Services were cut back drastically to the point where even the working textile museums at Harle Syke and Helmshore were put in mothballs and public conveniences were shut down as Local Authorities couldn't afford to run them.
Front line police officers were lost and nurses run ragged on the wards, social workers were given bigger case loads and waste disposal operatives averaged pay increases way less than inflation for the subsequent decade....hence rubbish piling up in Birmingham even now....
.......but I digress....yes, HM Land Registry is quite slow as i noted with a house purchase some time back.
No doubt running on a shoe string like the rest of the public sector.
Seem to recall Cameron introducing the Big Society...the Government running the country using volunteers!!

[Funkydrummer]

Thanks for all your contributions. Didn't consider that it may veer towards a political debate along the way but, thankfully, that was largely avoided.

Sent an email to the solicitors and, in the meantime, will actually enquire of the Land Registry.

[Poulton-le-Claret]

Me and Mrs PLC bought our current house in Dec-23. I got a letter from my solicitor to confirm the HM Land Reg was all sorted in about May-25.

[IanMcL]

Anyone any experience recently ?

Bought our current house in November last year, no mortgage and am still waiting for the land registry to finalise the matter.

Solicitors are telling me that it's just the way it is these days. It just seems a long time. I worked in property all my life and never, ever experienced a delay like this.

Any comments would gratefully received.

Tories cut public service and public winders why everything they need is either a long time coming or in the hands of folk exploiting them.

[timshorts]

That does seem like an interminably long time, Fd.
I moved in May having started the conveyancing process in late January. So around 13 weeks to completion. Fortunately, things went relatively smoothly.
I'd keep pestering your brief.

Have you not actually completed yet?

Sorry, but these (and a lot of the entries on this thread) are just rubbish.

1. The time it takes for a transaction to be processed will depend on what you bought.
2. The present delays for first registration, transfer of part, adverse possession, and anything else vaguely complicated is over a year and has been like that for quite some time.
3. Yes it has been like that before. In the 1990's delays forecast at 72 weeks, 84 weeks were not uncommon.
4. The land registry will expedite, but only if there is good reason to do so. I see no good reasons on this thread, just whinging.
5. Ringing "your brief" will only do any good if they have not submitted the application. If they have, then you need to wait your turn like everybody else.
6. Calling somebody "your brief", translates to mean "I am a criminal". Nobody else uses that expression.
7. Delays are caused for all sorts of reasons. Covid? Yes. Working from home? Yes. People keep ringing them up? Yes - which is why they now won't answer the phone on a Friday. Thanks. Government's **** ing about with staamp duty? Yes.
At this point, they should slowly be catching up because volume has dropped off for a few months, but that won't help anybody that completed in the period prior to, say, May very much.

[Yorkshirelad]

Sorry, but these (and a lot of the entries on this thread) are just rubbish.

1. The time it takes for a transaction to be processed will depend on what you bought.
2. The present delays for first registration, transfer of part, adverse possession, and anything else vaguely complicated is over a year and has been like that for quite some time.
3. Yes it has been like that before. In the 1990's delays forecast at 72 weeks, 84 weeks were not uncommon.
4. The land registry will expedite, but only if there is good reason to do so. I see no good reasons on this thread, just whinging.
5. Ringing "your brief" will only do any good if they have not submitted the application. If they have, then you need to wait your turn like everybody else.
6. Calling somebody "your brief", translates to mean "I am a criminal". Nobody else uses that expression.
7. Delays are caused for all sorts of reasons. Covid? Yes. Working from home? Yes. People keep ringing them up? Yes - which is why they now won't answer the phone on a Friday. Thanks. Government's **** ing about with staamp duty? Yes.
At this point, they should slowly be catching up because volume has dropped off for a few months, but that won't help anybody that completed in the period prior to, say, May very much.

I understand everything that you are saying. BUT are you also saying they shouldn't have a realistic time scale on anyone's application? If that's the case why bother giving a time scale in the first place as they did in my case. They raised my expectations by saying when I sent my application in January it would be complete by May.

With all the planned building of houses will it not take longer moving forward? You say a lot of comments are "rubbish'" but people are paying for a service.

So if the time scale to quote you should maybe 84 weeks then say so at the outset. I'm one of the people whinging but only because of what I was originally told. How many years is the "Covid" excuse going to get played out for.

[Dougall]

I understand everything that you are saying. BUT are you also saying they shouldn't have a realistic time scale on anyone's application? If that's the case why bother giving a time scale in the first place as they did in my case. They raised my expectations by saying when I sent my application in January it would be complete by May.

With all the planned building of houses will it not take longer moving forward? You say a lot of comments are "rubbish'" but people are paying for a service.

So if the time scale to quote you should maybe 84 weeks then say so at the outset. I'm one of the people whinging but only because of what I was originally told. How many years is the "Covid" excuse going to get played out for.

Perhaps they meant May 26?

[timshorts]

I understand everything that you are saying. BUT are you also saying they shouldn't have a realistic time scale on anyone's application? If that's the case why bother giving a time scale in the first place as they did in my case. They raised my expectations by saying when I sent my application in January it would be complete by May.

With all the planned building of houses will it not take longer moving forward? You say a lot of comments are "rubbish'" but people are paying for a service.

So if the time scale to quote you should maybe 84 weeks then say so at the outset. I'm one of the people whinging but only because of what I was originally told. How many years is the "Covid" excuse going to get played out for.

The 84 week thing was years ago, when we used to get estimates in multiples of 6 (or 12 when they were very behind).
Unless your application was, say, a DJP, that estimate looks over optimistic for most of the last 5 years.
The "new houses" will likely all take over a year to register as they are generally all going to get new titles, so it will go to somebody more senior. Those are the ones taking forever.

[Longsider]

My wife is a solicitor. She says this is absolutely normal in terms of timescales. Things are improving but at a very slow rate

[kenyon6923]

Bought a new home in 2019 and wanted to put up for sale the start of 2024 and deeds still not registered at land registry !!

Solicitors said to me unless you ring/contact them saying there's a urgency i.e. selling - your just stuck in a very big backdated Q.

[dsr]

There seem to be conflicting stories about the Land Registry and other government bodies. One being that covid and working from home made the system grind to a halt, and the other being that working from home is just as good as working from the office.