What is property fraud?
Property fraud can come in many shapes and sizes however one known area of fraud which is on the rise is where scammers attempt to impersonate property owners and sell or mortgage a property without the true owner’s knowledge. As such, if you own property (whether residential or commercial) it is important to consider how you can further protect your property by creating increased barriers against such fraudsters.
How can we help to protect your property from property fraud?
These days there are multiple options and steps available to property owners in order to help prevent property fraud These might include ensuring your property is properly registered at the Land Registry, making sure the owner’s address for service is up to date with the Land Registry, informing the Land Registry of any errors contained within the property title and setting up a property alert with the Land Registry. For further information on these approaches please read our previous Herrington Carmichael article ‘Preventing Property Fraud’.
You may however wish to go a step further and place a restriction over the registered title to your property.
What is a ‘restriction’ on title?
A restriction is a form of wording placed on your written property title documents (held by the Land Registry). There are many types of restriction available to cover different situations which arise in property law, but in this scenario, we would look to place a restriction over your property title which will prevent any future disposition of your property (being a sale, mortgage, registration of a lease etc.) from being registered at the Land Registry without an additional certificate from a conveyancer.
As such, an anti-fraud restriction on title includes wording which creates an extra hoop to jump through in the registration process, by preventing anything being registered on your title unless a signed certificate is provided by a conveyancer confirming they are satisfied that the person who executed the documentation submitted to the Land Registry is the registered proprietor (being the owner of the property shown on the title deeds).
What should you consider about this restriction on title?
Please note that a restriction such as this over your property title would mean of course that when you came to sell, mortgage or lease the property, you would have to comply with the restriction – and so a professional conveyancer (such as your property solicitor) would need to verify your identity and provide such a certificate during the transaction in order for the sale, lease or mortgage to be registered at the Land Registry. We suspect that any true owner of a property would accept that this an expected part of the process, in order to form a hurdle and a deterrent for fraudsters.
If you would like to further protect your property with a restriction on title, please contact us to speak to a member of our Real Estate Team.
