Deeds

abi113

We are almost at exchange of contracts on the sale of our house/purchase of a new property - well at least we thought we were but have come across a problem. Noone can find the deeds - the lender doesn't have them nor does the old solicitor and we don't have them. Our solicitor is saying it will cost £300 to retrieve them - is this the case and if so how long will it take? We hadn't budgetted for this amount of money to have to come out so close to moving so its been a bit of a shock! Awaiting a call back from solictiors and would appreciate some confirmation of this being the case - unfortunately solictor/estate agents are aware I am only young and use it to there advantage!!
Thanks in advance
Abi

micheleen

AIUI, if the property was already registered at the Land Registry then the actual deeds are purely of historical interest. I bought last year and have only got an Official Copy of Register Entry, no deeds as such at all.

Norma_Desmond

I think this is more common than you think - the deeds to our house were lost by the vendor and it had never been registered at the Land Reg. (200 year old property). It took 6 months to sort out, but didn't cost us a penny more, after all it wasn't our fault! Then, lo and behold, my parents bought a property recently where they had a last minute hold-up because of missing deeds, but because the house WAS registered it only put back exchange/completion by a week or two. They certainly didn't have to pay any extra either! Good luck tho'.

homer123456

Hi Norma would you mind letting me know how you went about recovering your deeds or did you have to re apply for them were in the same positon.

MyUserNamesTaken

I got my deeds and other related material sent to me by special delivery today, even though I've just re-mortgaged. Apparently, the Woolwich told my old lender that it didn't want them, as deeds are electronically recorded. So, Natwest (old lender) sent them onto me (for information purposes only). Question is what do I do with them now? They have no value, other than historical.

Lil_Dee_2

MyUserNamesTaken - keep hold of them. I re-mortgaged my last property, and had the same thing happen to me - this huge envelope turned up with all sorts of documents in it. As it happens, when I came to sell the property, my purchasers solicitor (I'm forcing a smile just typing about him - horrible, horrible man that he was) wanted some rather irrelevant information about the estate (it had been built on a previous land-fill area) and to be honest, we only tracked it down because of a reference number mentioned in some of the builders original planning requests !!! It really made the difference to us on that occassion. I'd guess ours was a one-off situation, but at that point, I was very pleased to have them to hand.

Lil Dee

RiskAdverse100

I do think abi113's solicitor should be asked to explain just how he has managed to get to the point of exchange without having the deeds, let alone knowing where they are?

Even if title to the property is registered there could be documents referred to in the title registers that would need to be supplied to the buyer's solicitor.

If only short passages of these documents are relevant to the property then the Land Registry will often extract this wording and set it out verbatim in the registers.

However, they may simply refer to the rights and covenants contained in a transfer of the property dated x and you would have to get hold of a copy in order to see what was involved.

It should be possible to get copies of such documents from the Land Registry....but not always. The Land Registry do lose things as well!

I would be very interested in the solicitor's reply!

RiskAdverse100

Suzi.Q_3

We've been told that deeds are being phased out - we're selling our house and the mortgage company can't find them. The solicitor has told us not to worry due to them being phased out.

silvercar

My deeds were also sent to me by the new lender when I changed mortgages. In preparing the papers to sell the house we found that the council inspection certificate for an extension that was done on the property years ago was amongst them.

Had we not found that piece of paper and if the council hadn't noted the issue of the certificate it could have been an issue on sale. Apparently if you need to apply for a certificate years later you need to meet current regulations not the ones in force at the time of the building work.

MyUserNamesTaken

I wasn't planning on chucking the deeds away! I would actually like to store them away safely somewhere, but don't want to pay a bank or solicitor for the pleasure (as they are of no real value now). the huge pile of stuff I received contains paperwork going back to 1877. I've got all the mortgage documents for the house, too. Also sent weret two death certificiates and a probate letter, along with loads of other bumpf!

Norma_Desmond

Hi Homer - well it was a stressful time to say the least and our vendor really dragged his heels in giving the soilicitors/Land Reg. the proof that they needed that he actually owned the property which I believe consisted of things like copies for any planning permission,and utility bills. He also had to sign what's called a 'statutory declaration' in front of a lawyer which stated that he was the owner. It took so long partly because the silly man spent a lot of time abroad. Good luck with yours - I wouldn't want to go through that uncertainty again!