Problem with legal department in county council

[agencydude]

Hi ,

My wife bought a second hand property 13 yrs ago. She applied for a mortgage under the shared ownership scheme with the county council which she got.

This meant she had a mortgage with the council and also had a loan with the council as the council part owned the property. At the time the legal department of the county council said they'd look after the conveyancing such as registering the title etc.

A few yrs later she paid off the loan in full and was just left with the outstanding mortgage.

Recently my wife was trying to remortgage the property and we discovered the following :

The council never registered anything!! After 13 yrs the title deeds are still in the name of the of the previous owner of the property.

According to our solicitor :"the lease must be registered and an application for First Registration made to the Land registry"

What surprises everyone we've talked to is that this legal dept still haven't done these tasks after 13 yrs.
The implications for us is that it would be difficult for us to sell the property if we wanted to since the title is not setup correctly.
Also our solicitor is going to have more costs as more than the usual work is required to remortgage the property.
The reason for the remortgage was to purchase an investment property and we're not sure now if any bank will give us a mortgage with the mess the title etc is in.

So is there any way to reprimand this legal dept for the above issues?
Or can they do what they want and get away with it?

 

[Marconi2012]

We have a friend who had exactly the same problem. In her case, the period of time, between purchasing and selling her house on, was 5 years.

Obviously, it was not noticed until the she had 'sale agreed' on the property.

It added significantly to her legal fees and lost her 2 sales and 1 home she had put a deposit on to buy.

Was your's a Dublin local authority? What stage in the process are you at?

Send me a private message and i can put you in contact.

 

[agencydude]

Hi Brian,
To answer your question:
Its in one of the county councils just outside dublin.
Current status is that we have put deposit on a house and we really need to remortgage current property in order to puchase this other house.

I suppose things could be worse. We could be trying to sell the property and trade up.
I think it must be some kind of record. 13yrs and property not registered!!
This legal dept realised this problem 5 yrs ago when we paid off loan part of shared ownership scheme. They said they'd sort it out then.