Questions and Answers
I’ve created this page to answer some of the many questions I am getting asked. These are often regarding specific aspects of putting the information on this site into practice, and are good examples of putting theory into practice.
Here are the questions I have currently answered
How to take over a residential property.
Someone removes your property, locks etc and replaces it with their own
What if someone turns up and claims to be the owner
You need to find out if the property is registered at the Land Registry. You can only claim unregistered property.
How to do your own conveyancing via the Land Registry
Here is a list of questions I will be providing answers to. If there is a specific question you think it would be helpful to have here please use the contact me facility
If a property appears out of use is that a legitimate target
What if someone turns up and claims to be the owner
What if people turn up and just attempt to throw you physically out of the property.
Can people remove your property from a location. How can you protect yourself
How to take over a rural property, usually a piece of land with no buildings.
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How to take over a residential property.
I apologise if this information is a bit disjointed. I effectively did a bit of a brainstorm around the issue. I may reorganise it later
Taking over a residential property and then renting it to someone is a very viable option. It fulfils two essential criteria, 1. you are the person who is factually in possession of the property for Adverse possession purposes, and
2. The property is being used for a useful purpose, not being allowed to decay etc.
And of course, getting some rent for a property allows you make improvements and keep things maintained as well.
This would only really apply to a property that is intact, in reasonable condition, and to which you don’t have to make a large investment of time and money to make it habitable. If you have to start pouring money in then the risks may be too great.
If someone is living at the property without knowledge of being a squatter, they are not breaking the law
I would advise having someone living there who actually does know the risks, but is able to effectively deny their knowledge of the status of the property.
I would also be aware that there is always the possibility of an owner arriving, and whoever is actually living there being asked to move. If you have a young couple in the place that’s one thing, having a young family with kids in local schools etc changes the potential risk enormously. How long a court would allow someone to remain is unknown.
Make sure there is a degree of separation between you and them. Make any connection appear to be completely random.
Advertise the property in a website and ensure you keep all contact made with potential tenants in order to show that the ones you choose appear to be at random. Have friends of friends be the ones replying to the advert, and being potential tenants.
Get a local ner-do-well to break into the place for you
Break in quietly one week, leave it, then go back at a later stage. Make full preparations at the property before you make it known what you are doing there. In many cases, you could spend days in a property, tidying, cleaning up etc, and if you do it quietly and avoid noise, windows etc, the chances are no one would even know you are there.
One of the obvious things to do is to collect any documents you may find. These can give you clues to any potential owner and how to track them, or their heirs. If you land at a property and find a set of deeds hidden at the back of a drawer, you’ve just hit the jackpot. Destroy them, or take them away and hide them.
Do not tell people you are taking the property, adverse possession etc unless you are directly being confronted about ownership questions
If anyone starts asking direct just say “it’s my property” don’t fall into the trap of giving an explanation. Give the impression that you resent the interference (without being hostile or aggressive) and are simply being private.
Nobody apart from the police can demand information from you. The easiest thing to do is always just say as little as possible. If you do have some background information, you could weave this into a simple story, but do not attempt to be elaborate. Most lies are unnecessarily complicated, people know this and will be wary from the get go. Don’t attempt to persuade people of your legitimacy, drop in a few useful bits of info, and then let them fill in the blanks. Most people will, and even if they aren’t sure if you’re genuine will rarely directly challenge you, or attempt to gather further information. We are a very private society. Use this to your advantage.
Most older properties will often have single glazed windows. These are simple to break onto. You only have to remove a pane of glass in many cases.
Have photo’s that show the condition of the property with access already made. This way you don’t appear to be the person actually doing the damage. In order to prosecute you for anything there needs to be proof of the actual crime. There would have to be something that links you to the actual crime of breaking in. Make sure there isn’t.
Take photo’s a month before the break in, then when you enter the property. There will be no way to tell who actually did the damage. If directly asked, just vehemently deny doing it, and keep denying it
You may have to cause a little bit of damage to cut off locks etc
make sure this is fully repaired and impossible to detect
Buy secondhand locks from ebay, or boot sales. They won’t then appear to have been changed.
Say you found all the keys in a drawer in the property
Most of these questions may be moot anyway. They would only be asked if someone does actually claim to own the property, or if the police are called.
Get yourself into a situation where you appear to be going in and out of the property entirely legitimately
Get a builder friend to come round with you when you first go in. Be completely brazen about it. A new owner turning up with a builder is probably the thing that most people would expect to happen. When it does, they won’t bat an eyelid.
Get a skip delivered before you seemingly arrive at the property..again, the actions of a legitimate owner.
Remember the squatters handbook from the 80’s. All the info you ever needed to get a house functional.
If there is property and furniture in the building, catalogue it, take photo’s that clearly show it’s condition etc. Move everything into one room whilst you use the rest of the property. You could also move anything out to another location and store it there for a while. You only do this on the off chance someone turns up and demands to know where Granny’s 18th century bureau is. If the building and property in it is trashed anyway, make a photo record of this and then dispose of the stuff. If anyone turns up claiming you’ve stolen their property, they would then have to demonstrate that it actually existed first, and that they own it. Just think about your own property. How much of the stuff you own could you prove you have if it disappeared tomorrow. Probably very little. We normally only catalogue things of value for insurance purposes. Anything left in an abandoned property will have little or no perceived value, there will be no record made of it, or photo’s showing that it was even there.
The simplest thing to do may well be to actually strip the place, and if there are any problems, it again becomes the responsibility of the other person to prove anything even existed. You can also claim that anything of value was removed before you arrived. If it cannot be proven against you, then there is no issue.
As with many areas of adverse possession, one of the best skills you can have is the ability to manage being challenged, possible confrontation, even threats. Do not ever fall into the pit of trying to defend yourself. Say as little as possible. Make others prove their case, the onus is never on you to prove something, the opposite is the case.
This goes against how most people react in difficult situations so practice these skills with a friend, or better still someone who can appear to be intimidating. It’s no different to learning basic assertiveness skills, and you may need to have these.
Have the ability to contact you available at all times. Do not be concealed and hidden. The biggest red flag for any neighbour is furtive behaviour.
Someone removes your property, locks etc and replaces it with their own
I’m afraid to tell you that you’ve just been effectively trumped. Unless you have a raft of evidence to prove your use of, and possession of the piece of land, then the new guy has effectively displaced you.
If you have the evidence, take the begger to court, prove your possession of the land predated and was superior to his, and hope that they will give you possession back. You don’t actually have to be the owner to be the person in possession, that being the whole point of Adverse possession. If you look at land law going back centuries, the person in possession of land is exactly that, and has all the effective rights of ownership that go with this
There is of course an alternative
Look closely at the site to see if he has cameras protecting his property there. If he has you will have to be very careful you don’t get caught by them. If you’re not sure about this, put a couple of trail camera’s around the site, well hidden, and establish what his actions are, where he goes to, checks etc.
Wait for a full moon and plan to do everything overnight.
Remove all of his property, locks, caravan etc. I’m not suggesting that you break the law, but a battery powered angle grinder would do the job, and it’s hard to prove damage caused to something that now sits somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and will never be found.
Pull the caravan out with a Tirfor winch because they’re quiet, very strong and pull a long way(hire or buy one). Don’t attempt to get into it, but leave it in a layby 10 miles away. Again, how can it be proved who put it there. Be aware of any traffic cameras before you do this.
Put your own caravan on the site as well as other assorted bits of valuable property. Make sure everything is secured and impossible to move without causing damage to it and that it is being covered by a camera. Make any camera’s obvious, and imply that there are hidden ones as well catching any activity on the site.
Go around the site taking hundreds of photo’s of your property, it’s condition etc
Make sure the entrance is secured by lots of big chains, multiple locks etc.
I would actually recommend staying on the site for a period of time. That way, you establish your actual possession of the site in a very real way, and will have days if not weeks of effective possession you can then prove.
Of course..If he has any sense, and the right knowledge..then the caravan will be worth a few grand, will be well secured with wheel clamps, hitch locks etc, making it very likely you will commit criminal damage and risk a charge of theft if you try to move it. He will have big chains and locks already, and there are camera’s catching your every move anywhere near and on the site, and HE already has extensive photo evidence of his possession. So you are the one who now won’t stand a chance. You can risk it..but I probably wouldn’t
The simple reality is that whoever has effective possession of the land gets to keep it, unless an owner turns up with irrefutable evidence of ownership.
Oh, and whenever I see a property that I know is abandoned where there is a £2 chain and padlock on the gate and a couple of keep out signs dotted around…I know that someone with very little knowledge is making a half hearted attempt to claim the property..and as far as I’m concerned, I could easily trump this by doing it properly. Be warned. If you’re going to try and claim something, do it properly. Make sure no one else can displace you.
There are some simple principles here
1. Don’t make anyone aware that you are claiming Adverse possession unless you are directly challenged. Act as if you are the owner, and give people that impression. Very few would challenge you on that.
2. Don’t make any attempt to negotiate with anyone else. Doing so may actually be recognising that someone else has a valid claim on the land. It also makes it very clear to other people what your position is and intentions are.
3. Put things of value on the land and ensure moving it would involve damaging it in some way. A caravan is ideal, but make sure it’s worth something.
4. Have good security which has to include camera’s. There is no better deterrent than believing they’re breaking the law for the majority of people. However, as you have found..if people think they can get away with something…then they will try to..just as the neighbour has.
5. Be present on the land in the early stages. This allows you to establish your possession, and to deal with any attempts to challenge you, or move you on.
6. Any piece of abandoned land may well have any number of people keeping an eye on it, and there is a good chance that some will want to claim it… they’re just unsure what to do, or how to go about it. When you act, there is a good chance it will piss someone else off, and actually prompt them to act as well.
What if someone turns up and claims to be the owner
The first principle here is simple..If they can prove their claim then you leave. Don’t argue or get difficult, just go. Be as reasonable as possible and cause as little fuss as possible. The fact that the property will continue to remain derelict for decades matters little, the law is totally on their side.
However
Ownership is something that has to be proven. Just because someone claims to be an owner, doesn’t mean that they are.
And even if they legitimately may well be the owner i.e. they are the favourite nephew of the old lady who lived there for 50 years, who has a copy of her will leaving everything to him..if there is no proof of ownership of the property itself, then he has no greater claim than you have.
Whether or not a property is registered at the Land Registry is largely irrelevant as property that has clear title may never have been registered simply because it has never changed hands.
There are usually two ways to prove ownership.
1. You are registered as the title holder at the land registry, or you are a beneficiary or legal representative of a registered title holder who has died. That’s it, simple, the person only has to prove that they are who they claim to be (the land registry itself goes to great lengths to ensure that people are who they claim to be) and their claim is absolute and cannot be disputed.
2. You have a copy of the deeds in your name, or are the designated beneficiary of whoever the deeds are in the name of. It actually doesn’t matter how old the deeds appear to be if you can demonstrate that you are a legitimate heir.
If the person claiming ownership has neither of these, stay put
In any event, stay put until you are shown definitive evidence
If the person is getting loud, aggressive, hostile, making threats etc, there is a very good chance they don’t have a good title to the property…and they know it…why do you think they’re trying to be intimidating. Someone who has proper title to a property will see you as a simple annoyance and inconvenience. There is nothing you can do to stop them from throwing you off, and it’s not even worth trying. Anyone with any sense has already had legal advice before they come anywhere near you and has no need to cause any difficulties. The law is entirely on their side, and always has been.
You need to find out if the property is registered at the Land Registry. You can only claim unregistered property.
This is the single biggest piece of rot that I see ill informed people trotting out time and again.
You can claim Adverse possession on either of these. There are very minor changes in play
If the land is unregistered, you make a full claim for title after 12 years of possession. You will get it or you won’t. If the property is registered, you make your claim after 10 years, and they will then contact the registered owner informing them of your claim, thereby giving them the opportunity to get rid of you. If they don’t, your claim can proceed and title can then become yours after a further two years. Note the common detail. It’s always 12 years whichever is the case. Oh, and the 12 year thing has existed for at least the last 50 years, only the actual process has changed, the time it takes never has.
An owner is an owner whether they are registered, or have a paper title only, both are equally valid, and both can become disrupted for any number of reasons.
And one thing that few people appear to have cottoned on to…If the property is registered with the LR, you have all the information you need to track that person down, their name, address, you can find out if they are alive or dead, have moved, left a will etc. By doing your research you can find out definitively if a property has become disconnected from its ownership. With unregistered land, you will always be taking a leap into the dark. I know which I prefer.
If you want further info on this, read on..
The Land Registry is simply a modern database of ownership of property, one that is entirely suitable for the modern age. Since its inception, what it has attempted to do is to ensure that the ownership of property is clearly defined and as simple as it needs to be. If you search for property information on the LR what you normally find
the Summary of title will normally show
1. who owns the property and their address
2. The nature of the title
3. The most recent price the property was sold for, or if transferred via probate, valued at.
4. Whether there are charges on the property(but they won’t tell you the amount of these, only who the charge is registered to)
5. Whether there are easements or agreements in place that affect the property(but not normally the actual details of these)
The title plan normally shows the location and the extent of the property on a large scale OS map. The boundary will be clearly marked with a red line.
The summary and plan will often show any changes that have been made to the property usually bits being sold off, or added to a title.
The land registry is only one way that property ownership is proven. The old fashioned method of having a thick file of paper deeds is equally valid. It’s just a lot more cumbersome and less useful for the modern age, hence the reason this system has largely been done away with.
If a property is registered with the LR, any existing deeds no longer have any relevance at all. They are just a historical curiosity and have been superseded.
When a property is registered with the land registry for the first time they normally take those very deeds, go over them with a fine tooth comb to ensure they’re valid, take out the pertinent details(as listed above), and chuck the rest of it in a bin as no longer being of any value.
So whether a property is registered or not is largely irrelevant. Ownership can be proven either way if necessary.
But this is where it can get interesting
Because the Land Registry is a large database, modern, backed up and managed by professional staff. Oh, and completely definitive. If they say an owner is person X, that’s who they are, and they will defend that to the hilt..even if, as is very occasionally the case, they are wrong. Mostly it isn’t. And there are millions of records.
Deeds are different. They sit in boxes, in filing cabinets in solicitors offices, bank vaults, in a cupboard at the house, hidden under the bed, or even sitting in amongst boxes of other papers…that are now rotting away because the house is abandoned, and the roof has started to leak. They are much more vulnerable, can be lost damaged, deliberately destroyed etc. There can be numerous reasons why they can cease to effectively exist, and this of course makes them much more vulnerable.
And in some cases, there may never have even been deeds to a property. Given the amount of effort made to document land, there are probably numerous bits that simply had no title to them…ever. Probably because a bit of marsh in an obscure country village had no value 200 years ago..but what about now.
Oh, and of course solicitors cost money. Why bother sorting out the land ownership issue if you’re in possession of, and have full use of it. I’m convinced that numerous farms have not had the title changed for generations…why bother when it makes no real difference.
There are however numerous ways in which the land registry ceases to be effective, although most of these are not it’s fault, or the fault of the legislation that supports it.
They have no way of knowing if the owner is alive or dead. Unless they’re informed of this when an ownership change takes place, and of course the new owner will then be shown on the title anyway.
They have no way of knowing if an owner changes address. It’s the owners responsibility to inform them if they move. If this applies to the property they live in this is fine because they will probably be registered at their new address anyway, but as for that little piece of land in the country that Aunt Gladys left them. When they move, and don’t update the address, it suddenly becomes an orphan with no current link to its owners.
And this then explains why the entire legislative concept of adverse possession has never actually been done away with. There can never be a system that covers every possible eventuality, and quite simply, there will always exist situations, in this case, properties that have become lost. And we have no mechanism that allows abandoned property to be taken back under ownership. There is the bona vacantia, but this has its own limitations and loopholes. Adverse possession continues to be that mechanism, albeit controversial and really quite clunky.
How to do your own conveyancing via the Land Registry
Actually, the answer isn’t quite as simple as the other answer makes it out to be. And just to confuse matters, the Land Registry themselves don’t provide any actual guidance as to what the entire process is, and of course if you get it wrong, it won’t go through.
I did transfer a property using this method recently. Before I did it successfully however, I did exactly as advised and just sent off forms TR1, and AP1. It didn’t work.
To carry out your own transfer of land without using a conveyancer
You will need the following forms, all of which can be downloaded and printed off. TR1, AP1, and however many copies of ID3 are required. In most cases you will need to complete these, print and sign them, and send them to the LR in the old fashioned way.
You will always need to have the Land registry title number, and their description of what the land is. Whatever the property is called is irrelevant, as far as LR is concerned. To them it’s a bit of land. Whatever pile of bricks is sitting on it has no concern to them
1. Complete and send off the Land Transaction Tax form. This can be done electronically.
Essentially you have to show that you have declared the sale to the inland revenue, and paid whatever tax is due on the sale. “You will get a Land Transaction Tax Certificate”, the number on which is required
2. The person selling the land has to complete form TR1 as they are the Transferor. The Transferee is the person buying the property and their details will have to be completed on the form. You have to complete this form at the end by way of executing a deed. This means there is a very specific wording that must be followed, and your signature has to be witnessed
(Signed as a deed by (insert your name here) in the presence of; Signature (yours);Signature of Witness(witness);Name (of witness in Block capitals); Address (of witness)
Suffice to say, you cannot do all of this electronically hence the need for paper copies.
3. The person buying the land, the transferee has to complete form AP1 as they are the one applying to alter the information on the actual record of the title. In other words, to swap the name of the existing owner for that of their own.
4. You will need to have an ID3 form for every interested party which is proof of their identity. If there is only the Transferor and the Transferee then you only need two. They have to be witnessed by a person on the list provided. This list used to be very limited, and would probably cost you, but since covid 19, it was expanded greatly and hasn’t changed back.
One of the benefits of the Land Registry is that they don’t actually want your application to fail and will usually therefore write to you if the application is deficient in some way, and tell you how to correct it. If you get this, just do what they ask and it should work out.
5. A cheque for the Fee, currently at £45 I believe, but they have lists of their fees on their website so check first.
Some possible complications
Make sure the address for service for the property is the sellers current address. They will send out various confirmation letters and they will go to the address they have on file. You can use a different address on the application, but this will complicate matters, although they will also send letters to the address you list.
The land has to be free of any charges etc. This can add a layer of complication as any charges will have to be paid off, and the bank, or lender has to effectively release the property before it can be sold. If you’re conveyancing yourself I’m unsure how exactly you would arrange to pay off someone else’s debt before handing the balance over. This will also take time. Banks however have an electronic link to the Land Registry which allows them to alter their records very quickly, however, as I found..there are humans in the chain, and they need to be found..and this is where the delays end up. In my case it took weeks to even pay off the debt, and lots of chasing to get the confirmation the debt had been released. And this was with HSBC!! I was seriously not impressed.
You are effectively handing over a lot of money for someone to sign a piece of paper saying you are buying something. You won’t get confirmation that the sale has been completed for months.
Any difficulties there may be regarding the title are then your responsibility. It’s up to you to carry out any searches and to satisfy yourself
The sale price is whatever you decide it is. As long as the tax appears to have been paid, neither the Tax office, or Land Registry have any interest in the actual amount you sold for. There are no checks made to see whatever amount is declared is the actual amount paid. However, bear in mind the figure you quote will be used for capital gains purposes in the future, so it could come back to bite you.
Another layer of complication arises if there is some form of loan to purchase the property. Forget do-it-yourself conveyancing, the lender will want the protection offered by the legal system…always. So this approach is for cash purchasers only
If the property hasn’t been registered at all, there will need to be all sorts of checks to see the title is sound. I would recommend that you insist the property is fully registered first before attempting to buy it. The transfer and first registration can take place simultaneously, but this is adding a layer of complication I seriously wouldn’t want.
In real terms I would only advise doing a transfer yourself if you’re doing it with family, or friends, oh, and you’re not in a massive hurry. Essentially it needs to be with someone you trust. The point of a solicitor or conveyancer is the very fact that they hold responsibility for all of these things, and will legitimately hold onto funds, make sure they go to the right places, and most importantly have insurance in place to cover anything going wrong.
For many people, these are the most important things.
I suspect the fact that we still refer to an exchange of contracts as being the point a sale is normally seen as completed means that conveyancers are relying on contract law to protect everyone during the process. In other words, the actual sale is a contract of sale which is of course enforceable in law, and which offers protection to both parties. The land registry part is the actual mechanism, and the nitty gritty detail, but it has no interest in the simple fact that there needs to be layers of protection to both parties, and the obvious fact that large amounts of money are being transferred from one person to another.
I am of course talking about situations where both parties are acting together to do the entire process without the expense of legal costs. If you are buying land off a stranger which is the most likely option, then they will probably have engaged a solicitor anyway. In real terms this should allow you to fill in a form, hand over a check and walk away. A further difficulty is that a solicitor may actually refuse to deal with you unless you have legal representation.
And as a final point, let’s just examine what you are getting for your expensive legal representation if you choose that option.
As we have seen, the transfer itself is 2 forms which take about 5 minutes to fill in. The need to identify you is covered if you’re using a licensed conveyancer or solicitor. They are authorised to do so already, no need for a separate form. Oh, and to clarify, that is one form per party. The sellers solicitor will have to get a closing figure for any outstanding debts, and arrange to pay these, probably by direct transfer form their own account(which then has your money in it) and get the charge lifted from the title.
They take off their fees, and then pay the remainder to the seller.
So in real terms, they get paid to fill in a form, handle some money(which will sit in their account for a period anyway). There are no significant checks required if the land is registered, the land registry already did the hard part when it was initially registered. Anything after that becomes simple.
and of course these charges are always x2 as each party has to pay its own, separate solicitor. You would think that logically one could act for both parties, but of course this is not possible
This is of course assuming the sale is a simple transaction without any complicating features. And I suspect the majority of property transfers are just that. The only complicating feature will be negotiating with lenders to get the money, or to pay the money off. How hard could that be.