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Private Treaty
This is the normal way that residential property is sold in the UK. The alternatives
being sales by tender or at an auction. As estate
agents we will agree an asking price with
our client. This will reflect our opinion of the market value and the ideal time-scale
in which the client wishes to move. This figure will be widely publicised in the
marketing and advertising.
But the private treaty negotiations are just
that, private negotiations. We must relay all offers to our clients, promptly
and impartially, but these are not made public. Other terms and conditions may
be attached – for example, over various fixtures, fittings, timing or whatever
– but all aspects of the negotiations are kept private and confidential.
Traditionally,
when contracts are exchanged following a sale by private treaty, the sale price
should still remain private. The estate agent might give a broad indication “the
house was sold at very close to the asking price”
and, occasionally, the actual sale price will be publicised but that should only
happen where both parties have given their prior agreement.
That said,
since April 2000, the Lord Chancellor has agreed that the sale price will be recorded
by the Land Registry (LR) (q.v.) in the public
section of the registry. The information is then in the public domain. Anybody,
not just the title holders, may obtain a copy of any LR entry for a nominal fee.
The LR also uses all the price data for statistical purposes and publishes information
on a regular basis broken down by region, county, council, authority and even
local postal codes.
The LR says it will not record the sale price where
it believes the figure may not be a fair indication of the actual market value
– perhaps because it was associated with a part-exchange
(q.v.) transaction and is only the capital difference, or it may include other
exceptional adjustments. Conveyancers are expected to warn the LR if a price on
their return is unrepresentative when it will either be qualified or omitted from
the records.
This means that where the parties are keen to keep the sale
price secret it can still be done. Reportedly, the LR is not proposing to make
an issue over returns where the sale price was, for whatever reason, not included.
It is not an omission which would legally allow the Registrar to refuse registration
of the sale.
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