Landlords in England and Wales might not be aware, but there is a free property alert service that monitors any significant activity on let property.

There is greater risk of a property being fraudulently sold or mortgaged if the landlord lives overseas, the property is empty or if there is no mortgage.

Signing up for a property alert will not automatically block any changes to the property register, but it will act as a warning when something changes, such as a new mortgage being taken out against the property.

Although property fraud is rare, HM Land Registry has prevented more than £100 million of fraud over the past five years.

Set-up process

An important first point is that a property can only be monitored if it is already registered with HM Land Registry, which may not be the case if acquired prior to 1990 and not mortgaged since then. A search of English and Welsh property can be made here.

For registered property, it is simply a matter of:

• Creating a property alert account; and
• Adding the properties to be monitored.

Up to ten properties can be monitored. However, you don’t need to own a property to monitor it, so it is easy enough to enlist family members to get around this restriction.

Unregistered properties

There is also more risk if a property is not registered, so it is recommended that an application be made to have such property registered. Although registration can be done by a landlord, many may prefer to use the services of a solicitor or conveyancer.

Restriction on title

Going a step further, putting a restriction on a property’s title will prevent a sale or mortgage being registered unless certified by a solicitor or conveyancer. The request itself is free for landlords, although a fee will likely be payable should a certificate be required.

The starting point for setting up a property alert, along with some guidance, can be found here.

Photo by Tiffany Tertipes on Unsplash

The COVID-19 pandemic stalled property transactions and first-time buyer mortgage applications, but now the residential property market has opened up estate agents are scrambling to deal with pent up demand.

Price outlook

The range of forecasts is markedly wider than usual, with a forecast price fall for 2020 of anything between 4% and 13% with considerable regional difference. Re-opening will have unlocked many of the estimated 400,000 halted transactions, but it is likely to take longer for new deals to build up in what may well be a buyer’s market. People could be affected in two ways.

• Negative: Employees face job insecurity, with the furlough scheme being wound down over the coming months and a potential increase in redundancies. Many self-employed people will struggle to get profits back to a pre-Covid level.
• Positive: Interest rates are historically low, with the bank base rate currently just 0.1%.

The 5 April effect

The estimated number of residential property transactions in April was more than 50% down on the previous year. However, the Covid-19 pandemic was not the sole factor in play here.

From 6 April, tax reliefs for homeowners were cut back, especially letting relief, so many sellers will have made sure they completed prior to then. The introduction of a 30-day due date for paying CGT will have also favoured earlier completion.

Mortgages

Some homeowners will have benefited from the crisis  ̶  remortgages by current homeowners looking to save money from lower interest rates have more than doubled year-on-year.

Although lenders are generally prepared to base mortgage applications on furloughed income, they require confirmation that an employee can go back to work. This means that only the reduced salary is taken into account, so higher earners subject to the £2,500 upper income limit will feel a disproportionate impact. A more expensive home may well have to wait until a return to work.

Although not wholly up to date, the UK house price index at the Land Registry has a vast amount of searchable information.