Charity selling unregistered ground rent portfolio

The problem

Many years ago, a benefactor bequeathed to a charity the unregistered freeholds on 180 houses subject to 999 year leases. The ground rent portfolio contained individual ground rents in the range of £5 to £10 p.a. The charity wanted to sell and approached us.

The solution

We agreed a price and set about working on the ground rent portfolio; this involved sorting through boxes of documents which had been delivered to us at our offices in Swansea and to be held by us on the undertaking of our Group Solicitor to return the documents if so requested by the vendor. Unfortunately, when we started examining and sorting the documents, it became apparent that certain documents of title (e.g. leases) were missing; where possible we obtained copies of the missing documents from the Land Registry; we got round the problem of the remaining missing documents by taking out indemnity insurance. This enabled us to complete the purchase.