My leisure interests

Martial arts Heritage railways Garden railways Motorcycles DIY

Downloads

Linux downloads Windows downloads Java downloads Perl downloads Home automation downloads

About me

Home & family My CV

Site info

Contact the author Download policy Keyword index

Registered conveyancing

Last modified: Thu Feb 23 16:37:37 2006

The process of buying or selling an EstateInLand which is registered with the land registry. In principle, registered conveyancing is simpler and less risky for the purchaser than UnregisteredConveyancing, because most encumbrances on the seller's title will be disclosed on the register, against the registered title itself (not the seller). At the time of writing, the LandRegistrationAct2002 had just come into force, displacing the 1925 Act. Although the 2002 Act makes many technical ammendments to the law of registered conveyancing, the basic principles remain the same. When the seller buys a registered estate, he gets the title as indicated on the register, but subject to any third-party MinorInterests noted on the register, and subject to any OverridingInterest that may exist. An ideal system of land registration would be a perfect implementation of the MirrorPrinciple, but the continuing need to accept the existence of overriding interests prevents this perfect implementation. However, the 2002 Act substantially reduces the number and scope of overriding interests.

It was always the intention of the legislators that the DoctrineOfNotice have little or no application to registered conveyancing. If an interest is noted on the registered against the RegisteredTitle, this is equivalent to the purchaser of the estate having notice of it. If the interest is not so noted, then the purchaser is, or should be, deemed to have no notice. It presents a problem for the courts if the purchaser is patently aware of an interest that affects the title, but claims not to be bound by it because it was not registered. In PefferVRigg1976, the judge gave effect to an unprotected minor interest by by interpreting s.3(xxi) of the LandRegistrationAct1925 as implying that a `purchaser for value' had to be acting in `good faith'. Since the purchaser and the vendor were effectively collaborating in a fraud, the purchase could not really be deemed to be in good faith. The judge also held that, even if the good faith test were satisfied, the court had jurisdiction to impose a ConstructiveTrust on the purchaser on general equitable principles.

This problem -- holding that registration is equivalent to notice, even where to do so allows a fraud to be perpetrated -- is not new to registered land. For example, in MidlandBankVGreen1981 CourtOfAppeal was prepared to hold the purchaser bound to an prior interest that ought to have been registered as a LandCharge, but was not. The decision was taken on the basis that the purchaser had not offered `value', and was thus not a `purchaser for value'. This reasoning is similar to that of the judge in Peffer. However, the HouseOfLords reversed this decision, and restored the strict letter of the law.

See RegisteredTitle for information about the register entries themselves.

LandAndPropertyLaw

Law glossary index

Shameless plug

By the author of this site. Buy on-line from Amazon USA | UK

Editorial

So you want to be a university lecturer? Read this first! Speak like your boss: new developments in managerese

Computing features

File handling in the Linux kernel: an in-depth look at how Linux handles files, filesystems, and file I/O All sorts of Linux stuff Confused about CLASSPATH? answers are here First steps in EJB using jBoss (recently revised for jBoss 3.2)