What to do when selling your home

In this section

Change of ownership is the process of selling or purchasing a home. There is a restriction in the title of the property as prescribed by the Land Registry because Bournville Village Trust is the long-term stewardship provider for the area in which your property is located.

For more information or advice, please pop into the BVT office located in the Oak Tree Community Centre or email [email protected]

The following example of the clause is included in the TP1 and the Official Register of Title.

(date) RESTRICTION: No disposition of the registered estate (other than a charge) by the proprietor of the registered estate is to be registered without a certificate signed by the Trustees of the Bournville Village Trust of 350 Bournville Lane, Bournville, Birmingham B30 1QY or their conveyancer that the provisions of clauses 2.15 of the transfer dated (dd/mm/yy) referred to in the Charges Register have been complied with.

NB : this restriction may vary slightly depending on the date your property was registered with the Land Registry.

Once you have accepted an offer from a prospective purchaser and instructed a solicitor, the buyer’s solicitor will request a Management Pack. Your solicitor should therefore request a Management pack by emailing [email protected].

The fee is £294, which covers all the costs and fees involved in the legal process of transferring ownership of your property to someone else.

The Management Pack is made up of the following:
Letter of requirements to comply with the restriction in the Title
Completing a Freehold Management Questionnaire
Preparing a draft Deed of Covenant
Public Liability Insurance certificate
Deed of Foundation
Lightmoor Stewardship financial reports for the previous 3 years.

The cost also covers the following :

Answering all questions and queries asked by solicitors
Providing information relating to any outstanding amounts owed
Providing information relating to any breach of covenant
Providing information relating to any consents issued
Checking the required Deed of Covenant
Issuing the required Certificate of Compliance which has to be signed by our Conveyancer where there is a cost implication to ourselves.
A Notice Fee (this is a standard fee charged by all solicitors)
VAT element of £49.00.

We do not stipulate which party covers any part or all of the fee, it is down to negotiation between the buyer and seller (or their solicitors) to determine how the fee is covered.

When a property is transferred, there is a legal requirement to ensure that the buyer enters into a Deed of Covenant signing them up to the same covenants that you did when you purchased the property.

As being bound by all the covenants is critical to Long Term Stewardship and important out of fairness to all residents on the Village, there is a restriction on the property title. This means that the Land Registry will not register the transfer (effectively will block the sale) unless they receive a Certificate of Compliance signed by our conveyancer on behalf of BVT to tell them that we have checked the Deed and are happy for the transfer to proceed.

So as part of the conveyancing process, BVT will be in correspondence with both the seller’s and the buyer’s solicitors, often filling out and returning questionnaires and answering multiple queries. We will check that the Stewardship Charge is paid up to date and ensure that there are no Breaches of Covenant against the property. We will usually supply copies of accounts and information on the Wear and Tear Fund.

Once all this is dealt with, we then create the Certificate of Compliance (a legal document), have to get it signed by our Conveyancer and then send this off to the solicitors.

At the end of the process, there is a legal requirement to provide us with a Notice of Transfer. We then have to check and acknowledge this and then use it to update our systems to the new information, noting any charges (such as a mortgage) against the property.

All of this involves a considerable amount of staff time and resources. This time has to be paid for as part of the property sale as it is not fair to charge the Stewardship Charge as this would mean that all the residents would be paying for the costs involved in you selling your property and we would not consider that this is fair.

This is why we charge a flat rate of £294 (including VAT) for all the admin costs and the costs involved in drawing up and issuing the legal documents.

The requirements for this process and covering the fees are detailed in the TP1.

The equity of your property cannot be transferred either by sale or by amendments without a Certificate of Compliance from Bournville Village Trust.

The process and the cost.

The £294 is a flat rate fee that covers all the costs and fees involved in the legal process of transferring ownership. The fee covers both the administration costs, issuing the Certificate of Compliance, the notice fee as well as VAT (our actual fee is £245 +VAT). If it was just amending a name or removing a name for example then that would be very little work and there would be no fees involved. However removing a name from a property is, in legal terms, almost the same as selling the property to someone else.

Although the removal or addition of a name from the property would seem a straightforward process, you have to engage a solicitor as there are a number of legal processes that must take place. One of those processes is informing the Land Registry that we consent to the transfer.

To do this, we need to deal with any solicitor’s enquiries, undertake several checks on our records and then create the Certificate of Compliance (a legal document), which we then have to get it signed by our conveyancer and then send this off to the solicitors.

All of this involves a considerable amount of staff time and resources. This time has to be paid for as part of the property sale or transfer as it would not be fair to charge the Stewardship Charge as otherwise this would mean that all the residents would be paying for the costs involved in your property transaction.

This is why we charge a flat rate of £294+ VAT for all the admin costs and the costs involved in drawing up and issuing the legal documents.