Redemption payment farce

[Clitheroekid]

The one exception to this would, theoretically be a VERY OLD unregistered title, where old documents do carry the title. However this is (a) very rare indeed and (b) have to be a property which has not been sold or mortgaged for a VERY LONG time (maybe 50 or 100 years or more)

This is not particularly rare at all, neither is the period 50, still less 100 years.

Compulsory registration was brought in as a rolling programme, starting in Central London in the 1920's and ending up in the most rural areas at the end of 1990. So if you own a house in, say, rural Suffolk, that's not been transferred or mortgaged since November 1990 the title will still be unregistered, meaning that if you do want to sell or mortgage it you will have to prove title by the production of title deeds.

This provides lots of entertainment for the few solicitors left who can still happily deal with unregistered conveyancing - the reaction of the average 25 year old, completely unqualified `conveyancing executive' to being presented with an unregistered title for approval is often hilarious.

You might be surprised how often such titles crop up in practice - I'm dealing with a woman whose parents completed the purchase of the house she's living in on 1 September 1939, just two days before war broke out!

and (c) I cannot conceive of a mortgagee lending on an unregistered title without the title having to be registered.

Lenders are perfectly happy to lend on unregistered titles, but probably only because mortgaging the property triggers the need for first registration of the title.

[unperplex]

Quite so, CK. Your comments on unregistered titles in general are sound.
I myself came across them in practise from time to time.They are somewhat more common than a ‘layman’ might imagine.
They occasionally seemed to crop up (sorry for the pun) in relation to farms, where the land had been passed from one generation to another by will followed by assent (which transmission as far as I recollect, did not trigger first registration, at that time, anyway).
However I was commenting specifically in the context of the “value” (or otherwise ) of deeds held by mortgagees after the mortgage had effectively been paid off. In that scenario, if the original mortgage (of unregistered land) had been given so long ago that it did not trigger first registration, then the documents held by the mortgagee might still be “valuable” in that they would be needed to prove title, but the mortgage would have had to have been granted so long ago that this would, as I said, be “very rare”.

[unperplex]

Your comments on the reaction of a “paralegal” to an unregistered title remind me of a local barrister I came across in my youth, who had a little sideline in giving opinions on titles which involved the provisions of the Settled Land Act 1925. He regarded these provisions as very straightforward and was mightily amused by the numbers of solicitors who felt they needed his opinion.

[Mike4]

Quite so, CK. Your comments on unregistered titles in general are sound.
I myself came across them in practise from time to time.They are somewhat more common than a ‘layman’ might imagine.
They occasionally seemed to crop up (sorry for the pun) in relation to farms, where the land had been passed from one generation to another by will followed by assent (which transmission as far as I recollect, did not trigger first registration, at that time, anyway).
However I was commenting specifically in the context of the “value” (or otherwise ) of deeds held by mortgagees after the mortgage had effectively been paid off. In that scenario, if the original mortgage (of unregistered land) had been given so long ago that it did not trigger first registration, then the documents held by the mortgagee might still be “valuable” in that they would be needed to prove title, but the mortgage would have had to have been granted so long ago that this would, as I said, be “very rare”.

Indeed and from memory, a mortgage for more than 25 years was virtually unheard of until relatively recently. Certainly very rare indeed 30 years ago in 1990 AFAIK.

[richlist]

My first mortgage in 1973 at the age of 21 was for 30 years.
I guess if I still owned the property it would be unregistered.

[AF62]

Out of interest, how would one go about leaving £1 on the mortgage for a period of time? If you pay off a chunk of the mortgage would the lender not still require monthly payments on the outstanding balance, even for a pound?

I have a mortgage with Nationwide which I effectively paid off years ago. However at the time I took it out its conditions allowed you to make overpayments up to a certain amount each month without penalty, and importantly, allowed you to ask for those overpayments to be returned to you at any time.

I took advantage of making overpayments and reduced the mortgage down to £10 in a relatively short period, and then kept it at that level. At that point the monthly mortgage payments were 5p which were paid by Direct Debit.

A few years ago Nationwide got fed up with people like me so tried to force the closure of the mortgage by forgoing the remaining £10, so I had an interesting one sided discussion about how much the balance needed to be for them not to close it, and with them refusing to say. To make matters worse for them I had also taken advantage of another condition which allowed me to extended the term for another 25 years.

Anyway it is now £50 with a 25p monthly payment for the next couple of decades.

The advantage to me, which I have used once and could do again in the future, is that Nationwide has to lend me up to £50k (the amount overpaid) with no notice or checks at a mortgage interest rate and the money will be in my account within a couple of days. And then when I want I can simply return the money back and take the balance back to £50 again. Rather handy to have this cheap and reliable line of credit when your other funds are tied up for one reason or another.