Land Law Foundations and Estates in Land, Registered and Unregistered Title
This domain tests whether you can identify precisely what a client owns - which estate, whether legal or equitable, and whether it binds a purchaser - before any drafting or search begins. Every later step, from contract to the application at HM Land Registry, follows from that analysis.
Estates, interests and formality
- Section 1 Law of Property Act 1925 permits only two legal estates: the fee simple absolute in possession and the term of years absolute. Everything else exists in equity.
- A conveyance of a legal estate must be by deed (s.52); a contract for the sale of land must be in writing, contain all agreed terms and be signed by both parties (s.2 Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989).
Registered title
- Title is the register. Section 58 Land Registration Act 2002 makes the register conclusive as to the estate.
- Registrable dispositions (transfers, leases over seven years, express easements by deed, legal charges) must be completed by registration (s.27).
- Third-party rights are protected by notice (s.32) or restriction (s.40); some bind without protection as overriding interests (Sch 3), including leases of seven years or less and interests of persons in actual occupation.
- Under s.29 a registered purchaser for value takes free of anything neither protected nor overriding.
Unregistered title
- Title is deduced from deeds; a good root of title at least fifteen years old is required (s.23 Law of Property Act 1969).
- Land charges are registered against the estate owner's name (Land Charges Act 1972). Class C(iv) estate contracts, D(ii) restrictive covenants and F charges are void against a purchaser for money or money's worth unless registered; a Class F charge is also void against a mortgagee.
Worked example
A buyer purchases registered freehold. The seller's neighbour holds a five-year written tenancy at market rent and, separately, an option to purchase granted in 2019 and not entered on the register. The tenancy binds: Sch 3 para 1 makes short leases overriding. The option is a registrable estate contract; if unprotected, s.29 lets a purchaser for value take free - unless the option holder is in actual occupation of a relevant interest, which needs close analysis of Sch 3 para 2.
Traps
- Treating exchange of contracts as passing the legal estate; it passes only an equitable interest.
- Using the wrong protection mechanism - land charges are registered by name, register notices by title number.
- Forgetting that a beneficial interest behind a trust binds only through occupation or overreaching, not automatically.