deeds lost in fire

emmahane

does anyone know how this works? we have signed the deeds to our new house but apparently the solicitor has found that there was a chnage to the deeds in 1971 and these have since been lost in a fire, he wont got to exchange without them so has asked the vendors solicitor for some kind of insurance which costs them, has anyone any idea what this means?

G_M

I assume this is an unregistered house? If it is registered, deeds are irrelevant, just go to the Land registry.

If unregistered, then deeds going back proving a chain of ownership are vital and your solicitor is right to advise you not to Exchange without a guarantee that the vendor has the right to own/sell the property.

If insurance is available to cover this scenario, then it seems right that the vendor should pay for it since it is the vendor who is unable to prove his ownership adequately.

silvercar

The indemnity covers someone else turning up and waving the deeds at you and claiming ownership.

In the days when mortgage lenders would hold onto the deeds, there was a big fire at one of the deeds holding places for one of the northern town building societies (can't remember which one). A load of deeds were lost and the building society undertook to recreate all the deeds destroyed. I don't know if this applies to your case.

emmahane

thanks for the replies, so you dont think we will have a problem from the vendors then as our solicitor has not heard from them, they would surely have this problem with any other buyers if they decided not to pay