Problems found after you bought · Property deed of variation
When I bought this property, I didn’t know a missing or outstanding deed of variation could hold up a sale or remortgage. Now I’m stuck.
Would you have bought the property if you had known?
If you had known that the lease, transfer or another document affecting the property still needed to be varied before you committed, and understood the problems this could cause when you later came to sell or remortgage, would it have changed your decision?
- Would you have paid the same price?
- Would you have wanted it investigated first?
- Would you have walked away?
If knowing about the problem might have changed what you did, the next question is obvious.
Did you receive the right advice when you bought?
You may not know the answer yet. But if nobody explained the problem, or you are now questioning what you were told at the time, that is worth looking at.
You don’t need to know whether anyone was at fault. Tell us what happened and when you bought. We’ll talk it through with you.
Why a deed of variation can hold up a sale or remortgage
In a property transaction, “deed of variation” is a general description for a later deed intended to change the effect of an earlier document. The document being varied might be a lease, transfer, conveyance, deed granting rights, restrictive covenant, estate rentcharge arrangement or legal charge. This page concerns deeds affecting property titles, not deeds varying a will or deceased person’s estate.
The correct document and registration procedure depend on what is being changed. Provisions in a transfer concerning easements, restrictive covenants or estate obligations may sometimes be amended by a deed of variation. But changing the registered extent of land may require a formal transfer, while extending a lease term or adding land to the premises may operate as a surrender of the existing lease and the grant of a new one. The document’s title does not determine its legal effect.
A sale or remortgage can be delayed because a required variation was identified but never completed, an executed deed was not correctly reflected or protected in the register, a necessary party or lender did not consent, or the deed changed something beyond the problem it was intended to solve. Requirements and registration consequences depend on the document, the titles affected and the proposed lender.
How the problem usually surfaces
It was promised and never happened
When you bought, a variation was said to be coming, or was left to be dealt with after completion. It never was, and the point has resurfaced.
The deed exists but the register was not properly updated
A deed was executed, but the appropriate registration application was not completed or the variation was not protected against every affected title.
The necessary party will agree, at a price
A landlord, developer, management company, neighbouring owner or covenant beneficiary is willing to cooperate but requires a payment and its legal costs.
A lender’s consent is outstanding
One of the affected titles is mortgaged and the relevant lender’s consent, discharge or replacement security may be required before the variation can be completed or registered.
Another owner or interested party has to join in
The variation affects several titles or changes another person’s rights, but not every necessary party has agreed to or executed the deed.
The deed changed more than expected
The deed corrected one problem but also altered ground rent, access rights, covenants, maintenance contributions or another provision that was not properly explained.
What you can do about it now
Start with what the register shows. Ask your conveyancer to obtain the registers and filed documents for every affected title, and check whether any variation has been properly reflected or protected. If a deed was executed but the registration application was never completed, it may be possible to complete or correct the registration without renegotiating the substantive terms. The current ownership, registered charges, execution and necessary consents must nevertheless be checked.
Establish what needs to change, which document governs it, and who has to agree. Depending on the problem that may include a landlord, a developer, a management company, a neighbouring owner, a covenant beneficiary or a lender on any affected title. Ask your conveyancer to confirm the necessary parties before anyone approaches anybody, because an approach on the wrong basis can be hard to retrieve.
Get the terms in writing before you commit, and check what form the correction should take. Negotiating directly has no fixed rules, so any payment, the other side’s costs, the timetable and exactly which provisions change should be recorded first. Ask also whether a deed of variation is the right instrument, because some changes require a transfer or operate as a surrender and regrant, with different registration consequences.
If you are selling, your conveyancer can ask the buyer’s solicitor what remains unresolved and whether it arises from the buyer’s lender’s requirements. If you are remortgaging, your conveyancer can check your proposed lender’s requirements directly.
What happened when you bought?
Whether the need for a variation could have been identified when you bought depends on the documents and circumstances then existing. The registered title, lease, transfer and other filed deeds may have disclosed the underlying provision, but the problem might also have depended on the physical layout, another owner’s title, enquiries, an outstanding promise or the lender’s requirements at the time. A variation required today was not necessarily required when you bought. The questions are what problem then existed, whether it was identified, what solution was promised and whether any necessary deed and registration application were completed.
Several records from the time may matter, and some may survive. The registers of the titles affected show whether any variation was reflected or protected. The contract may contain a special condition obliging the seller to hand over an executed deed on completion. The replies your conveyancer received may show whether a variation was requested and what answer came back. There may be an executed deed on the file for which no registration application was made. The lender’s historical written instructions may also be difficult to recover, because they are revised regularly and superseded versions disappear from public view.
Was this property really mortgageable when you bought?
Getting a mortgage when you bought does not necessarily tell you how readily mortgageable the property was across the wider market. There are two historical questions worth asking.
What did your own lender’s written requirements say about deeds of variation when you bought? And what express requirements did other lenders have recorded at the same time?
Lenders’ written requirements were not necessarily uniform, and their wording changed over time. That means both which lender you used and when you bought can matter.
Lenders set out in writing what they expect a conveyancer to do about particular features of a property. Those instructions are revised regularly, and superseded versions drop out of public view, which can make a question as simple as what was my conveyancer told about deeds of variation in the year I bought? surprisingly difficult to answer from the sources available today. Lexsure has retained historical lender-specific conveyancing requirements since April 2007, so where the records permit they can help reconstruct what your lender’s requirements said at the time and how that compared with the wider lending market.
Across that period, 48 lenders in our covered archive population have had express requirements about deeds of variation on record, addressed across 7 separate places in their instructions. The earliest express appearance we can identify in the material we hold dates from 2008; the most recent recorded change of wording is 2026.
Two points of precision, because they matter. “Earliest identified” means the earliest express appearance in the material we hold, not the date any requirement began. And where our material for a particular lender and period is incomplete, that lender is left out of these figures rather than counted as having said nothing. We do not treat an incomplete record as showing that the lender had no requirement.
So, when did you buy?
Changing the year here doesn’t send us an enquiry or tell us who you are.
An example of the kind of wording in force 2007 to 2011
One lender’s requirements, not named, by way of illustration. Requirements were not uniform and this is not the wording that applied to your purchase — that depends on your lender and your completion date.
No lender handbook Part-2 (specific) requirements were published prior to . But professionals were still under a duty of care on this topic. It is still worth speaking to us even if the purchase predates .
If we find no express requirement for your lender
Where our material for your lender and period is complete, the answer may simply be that no express wording about deeds of variation appears in it. Where our material is incomplete, we treat that as a gap in what we hold, not as evidence that your lender said nothing.
Either way, the lender’s instructions are only one part of the record from the time.
The wider picture
Historical lender requirements can help us understand how mortgageable the property was when you bought. The conveyancing file and the advice given to you also matter.
Lexsure holds historical Report on Title material: the reports conveyancers sent to homebuyers, going back years. That material shows the kinds of variation issues that were being addressed when firms reported to buyers, and it is a second and separate record from what lenders required.
Whether a variation was identified as needed
Were you told that a provision in the lease, transfer or another document needed varying, and what would happen if it was not?
Whether it was made a condition
Was obtaining the deed made an obligation on the seller, or was the purchase allowed to proceed without it?
Whether the deed was completed and registered
If a deed was obtained, was the appropriate application made against every affected title, and were you told what effect registration, or failure to register, would have in that particular case?
What the deed actually changed
Were you told everything the deed altered, including any ground rent, rights, covenants or contributions changed at the same time?
Whether the effect on selling was explained
Were you told an outstanding variation would be raised again on a future sale or remortgage, and could matter to a buyer’s lender?
These are examples of issues addressed in historical conveyancing material, not a checklist of what every purchaser should have been told. What mattered in an individual purchase depended on the circumstances and on what was known at the time.
So even if your mortgage completed, or there is nothing unusual in your lender’s historical requirements, it can still be worth talking to us about what happened.
Could this problem have been seen coming?
The relevant starting point is what was known, or could reasonably have been identified, when you bought.
What did the register show? Was a variation ever obtained? What was in the conveyancing file? What were mortgage lenders requiring at the time? What kinds of variation issues were conveyancing firms addressing with homebuyers? And what were you actually told?
Taken together, that can help build a picture of whether the problem you are facing today was already something that should have been considered when you bought.
Did you receive the right advice?
What the historical evidence can tell us
Where the relevant lender and period are covered, we may be able to establish what that lender’s conveyancing requirements said when you bought, and how that compared with the wider record at the time.
- That does not by itself establish that anyone was negligent, or that you have a claim. Those questions need the original file and legal advice.
- The absence of express wording does not establish that the lender accepted the issue.
- What your conveyancer had to tell your lender and what they had to tell you are different questions, and the second depends on the retainer and the circumstances.
Time limits apply, and in some cases the date on which you first knew enough about the problem matters as well as the date you bought, which is why we ask about both. Our full methodology, including how we treat gaps in the record, is set out in the archive and its limits. Where a solicitor later needs formal historical evidence, Lexsure can provide source-evidenced historical lender information.
Sources and review
This page concerns an outstanding or defective deed intended to vary a document affecting a property title. It focuses on whether the correct document was obtained, executed and registered, rather than the underlying title problem. For the underlying issue, see defective lease, ground rent, estate rentcharge, restrictive covenants, easements and service rights and boundary problems. It does not concern a deed varying a will or the distribution of a deceased person’s estate.
Amending a deed that effects a disposition of registered land, and the registration consequences of doing so, are addressed in HM Land Registry Practice Guide 68. A deed may be varied by agreement between the necessary parties. Some leases and restrictive covenants may also be varied or modified through particular tribunal or court procedures, while separate statutory routes exist for certain other changes. This page states no periods or thresholds, and the current position must be verified at each review. It states no lender requirement as a general rule, because requirements differ between lenders and change.
Historical lender information is drawn from Lexsure’s archive of lender-specific conveyancing requirements, maintained since April 2007. Figures on this page state the population they are drawn from.