When I started practising conveyancing thirty plus years ago, leasehold conveyancing was very different.
One of my most distinct memories was being asked to go to a local firm of freeholders/managing agents in the town with a Notice of Assignment and two guineas (but in new money – I’m not that old!) within twenty eight days of completion. £2.10. I handed over two copies of the notice and the secretary receipted one copy and handed it back to me. Notice of assignment done. The notice was placed with the deeds.
I remember I used to get very concerned about making sure that the notice was done at the correct time.
Fast forward a few years, and I remember some debate about whether if you served the notice but did not receive a receipted copy, could you rely on the cheque having been cashed as evidence that the notice had been served? If my memory serves me right, that was connected to whatever the Lenders’ Handbook said at the time, but my memory is a little jaded on that one.
But what I am trying to get across is how much easier (and cheaper) it was. Now we have to do the following:
- Serve notice on the managing agents
- Serve notice on the freeholder (if the ground rent and service charge are paid to two different companies even if we know that the companies are connected in some way and trade from the same offices)
- Send a form completed by the client providing all of the contact information
- Provide an executed Deed of covenant
- Provide a copy of the Transfer deed
- Provide copies of the title
- Obtain a Certificate of Compliance for Land Registry purposes
And I am sure you can add more to this list.
And the fees? I had a transaction this week where the fees totalled £1,000.00. Just for the freeholder and managing agents to update their records. I know that it is probably not as simple as that and there may be other things that the agents do but it does seem an extortionate amount when you consider that it is more than some firms charge for the whole process (and I say to those firms – why? Put your fees up!!). And we have to pay these fees if we want the Certificate of Compliance in order to be able to register the change of ownership at the Land Registry. And then we have the delay in receiving the documents which means that we are contacted by the lender asking why the registration has not been completed. All of that ends up to more costs on our part and I find the ‘after completion’ work in leasehold properties quite stressful. We are subject to the whims of the managing agents and the person dealing with the documents. Clients have moved by this stage and do not wish to challenge the fees – they have paid and it is just over to us to register ownership and deal with the formalities.
Life was so much simpler years ago…..
