A True Story
It happened to Simon and Christine Rowntree. They decided to downsize as their children had grown up and moved away. When their conveyancer applied for their deeds, they found that their property had been fraudulently registered by a Mr Khalid who had taken out a mortgage on the property for £325,000.00.
Could this happen to you?
You’re more at risk if:
· your identity’s been stolen
· you rent out your property
· you live overseas
· the property is empty
· the property is not mortgaged
· the property is not registered with the Land Registry
What steps can you take:
You can take steps to protect your property from being fraudulently sold or mortgaged.
Registering your property gives you proof of ownership; helps protect you from someone fraudulently selling or mortgaging it; eliminates the need to keep paper deeds which might get lost or destroyed by accident; makes it easier and quicker for you to sell, mortgage or give it away in the future and reduces disputes over boundaries.
Once your property is registered you can sign up to the Land Registry Property Alert service. Alerts are sent to you via email when official searches and applications are received against the property you want monitored. If someone applies to change the register of your property, for example if someone tries to use your property for a mortgage, the Land Registry will send you an alert. This will not automatically block any changes to the register but it will alert you when something changes so that you can take action. You can get alerts for up to 10 properties per email and there is no fee for this service (yet).
You can ask for a restriction to be put on the title deeds of your property to stop the Land Registry from registering a sale or mortgage on your property unless a conveyancer or someone you have specified certify the application is made with your approval.
Updating contact details:
The property you own is a valuable asset. Records of ownership (usually referred to as the ‘title’) are held at the Land Registry and if they wish to contact you, it is very important that they hold the correct details. If the details they hold are not correct then you may not receive correspondence from them, which could result in changes being made to your title without your knowledge or even the loss of the property. This could be as a result of a genuine claim or because of fraud. With this in mind, it is important that you tell the Land Registry what address or addresses you wish them to hold for you (or each of you if more than one). They can hold up to three addresses per person and one of the addresses can be an email address. At least one address has to be a postal address – however it does not have to be a UK address. If the Land Registry needs to send you a communication, they will use all the addresses they hold for you.
If you will not be living at the property you own, we would recommend that you do not include that property address as one of the addresses held the by the Land Registry.