Priority, amending and releasing security

Real estate lawyers will often be involved in registering legal charges at HM Land Registry. In some cases, they will also simultaneously be involved in registering deeds of subordination, deeds of priority, intercreditor deeds or deeds of substitution. In most refinance transactions, real estate lawyers will deal with the release of existing security and the registration of that release or discharge at HM Land Registry.

Priority

Competing security interests arise when more than one creditor has taken security over the same asset(s). Determining the order of priority between those security interests decides the order in which each of the secured creditors can claim on the secured property in an enforcement or insolvency scenario.

The 'first in time' general rule

The basic starting point in relation to priority of security is that a creditor who is ‘first in time’ with a security interest in an asset takes priority over all subsequent security interests in that same asset. However, there are a number of exceptions to this rule:

•
a legal security interest takes priority over an earlier equitable security interest in respect of the same asset if certain

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