Land Registry and money grabbing solicitors
Discussion
Hi all,
Basically, I extended the lease on my flat in June 2021. My solicitor fees were in the region of £2800. As I had a mortgage I required a Deed of Substituted Security.
At the same time I remortgaged with a different lender using my usual solicitor. ( They were not able to act on a lease extension )
All fine so far.
Last week I received an email from the solicitor who arranged the lease extension. They informed me that the Land Registry had not processed the lease extension application and that in order to do so I would have to pay a further £350 plus VAT to facilitate this.
I spoke with my usual solicitor who sent me this reply:
'The application for the remortgage was intended to be processed after the extension lease application had been completed. We gave the LR the application reference of the ext lease application for that reason, so that they could marry this up and complete the new mortgage with the new mortgage provider using the new Title Number for the new lease after processing the initial solicitors application.
Therefore, a DSS would not have been required for our application had the applications been processed in the order they were received.
The LR usually processes the applications in this way so I don’t understand why they could not disregard the DSS in favour of BoS as that charge no longer exists, complete the new lease application and then register the new mortgage against the new lease title, which is what we were expecting would happen!
I don’t understand how the remortgage application went ahead of the new lease application when they were both against the same current title number and should surely have been processed in the order received.
So the problem appears to be that the LR have looked at the remortgage application before completing the new lease application and now presumably don’t want to backtrack, in which case a DSS for the new lender will be required.
(The lease extension solicitor name withheld) do say in their email that they asked the LR to process the applications in order of priority but they say their system won’t allow them to do so as they cannot register a DSS over a charge that no longer exists. But that’s because they did the applications in the wrong order! '
So there it is. Not my fault but I have to pay to correct the mess that has occurred.
Anyone have any advice or opinion?
Basically, I extended the lease on my flat in June 2021. My solicitor fees were in the region of £2800. As I had a mortgage I required a Deed of Substituted Security.
At the same time I remortgaged with a different lender using my usual solicitor. ( They were not able to act on a lease extension )
All fine so far.
Last week I received an email from the solicitor who arranged the lease extension. They informed me that the Land Registry had not processed the lease extension application and that in order to do so I would have to pay a further £350 plus VAT to facilitate this.
I spoke with my usual solicitor who sent me this reply:
'The application for the remortgage was intended to be processed after the extension lease application had been completed. We gave the LR the application reference of the ext lease application for that reason, so that they could marry this up and complete the new mortgage with the new mortgage provider using the new Title Number for the new lease after processing the initial solicitors application.
Therefore, a DSS would not have been required for our application had the applications been processed in the order they were received.
The LR usually processes the applications in this way so I don’t understand why they could not disregard the DSS in favour of BoS as that charge no longer exists, complete the new lease application and then register the new mortgage against the new lease title, which is what we were expecting would happen!
I don’t understand how the remortgage application went ahead of the new lease application when they were both against the same current title number and should surely have been processed in the order received.
So the problem appears to be that the LR have looked at the remortgage application before completing the new lease application and now presumably don’t want to backtrack, in which case a DSS for the new lender will be required.
(The lease extension solicitor name withheld) do say in their email that they asked the LR to process the applications in order of priority but they say their system won’t allow them to do so as they cannot register a DSS over a charge that no longer exists. But that’s because they did the applications in the wrong order! '
So there it is. Not my fault but I have to pay to correct the mess that has occurred.
Anyone have any advice or opinion?
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