Bank has lost the deeds to my parents house - advice please?!

Tishdy

Hi there,

this is my first post on this site and I hope it is an appropriate place to ask for advice.

I'll try to keep the story brief. Am doing this on behalf of my parents as they are going nuts and unable to get the bank to come to a resolution.

In summary....
My parents paid off their mortgage about five years ago, are now retired and decided to sell their house so that they could move closer to us.

In early August 2009 they kicked off the process of putting house up for sale. Started on doing the HIP and appointed solicitor, valuation etc. etc.

The HIP procedure flagged up that the house for some reason (a period where land registry didnt happen) had no record of showing that my parents owned the deed to the property. Therefore to complete the HIP, the house needed to be reregistered, for this you need to have the deeds.

My parents contacted their mortgage lender who confirmed deeds had been sent to their bank for safe keeping by recorded delivery about 4 years ago. A request was then made to get the bank to find the deeds in their secure site and send to the solicitors so that they can complete land registry and put the house up for sale.

Following a number of conversations over the period August to October it emerged the bank had LOST the deeds to the house (something you may think unthinkable as we did!) it took a number of weeks to get the bank to admit the mistake.

The bank have now taken responsibility but 4 months on from contacting the bank and making countless complaints about lack of resolution (from both my parents and the solicitor the bank had agreed to fund to sort the mess out) my parents are no closer to having the deeds restored or whatever needs to happen (this is where I am lost) to resolve the registry issue so that they can finally put the house on sale.

All my parents have had is a complaint acknowledgement and a poultry sum offered for the inconvenience caused with no explanation of how/even if they can resolve it. The result, my parents having a complete lack of trust that the bank can sort anything out. This is causing no end of stress and why I am turning to this forum to see if there is any advice anyone can offer.

They have already gone to the Ombudsman who will look into it, but for us this is not about compensation. It is that after 16 weeks of such poor customer service (apart from all the obviously computer generated apologies and letters) they have no idea of if/when this will be resolved. This is fast going to become 6 months later than they originally planned to put the house up for sale, and I have a real concern about the effect it is having on my parents health as my Mum desperately wants to move because travel is becoming more difficult.

Has anyone else here had any similar experience?, I just can't believe something as important as this sent by recorded post can be lost at a secure site, its the one thing banks surely just have to get right and no excuses.....sorry now I'm ranting, won't even get into responsibilities of getting the housing market moving again.

If anyone has any advice or thoughts or an understanding of the re-registration process for land registry I would be really appreciative. I feel I need to get involved somehow so that I can get this resolved and not have to see my parents so upset and stressed all the time!

Many thanks for reading such a long post!
Look forward to hearing your thoughts
Cheers
Tishdy
UK

Doozergirl

Have your parents spoken to a conveyancing solicitor about it? I'm thinking that there is an indemnity policy available to cover lost deeds. It isn't an area that I'm familiar with - I have bought and sold a property where the original deeds were lost some time ago. There was an indemnity policy in place against unknown convenants etc. which my solicitor ensured and we topped up that policy when we sold.

Whether there would be an issue with actually registering the title I don't know but my own basic assumption would be that if they had satisfied a mortgage on the property then that must count as proof of ownership - whether that results in absolute or possessory title I am not sure. Richard Webster is our resident solicitor - perhaps he will be around in the morning to answer (he's not usually on in the evening IIRC)

I am pretty sure that the property is still saleable but whether the value is affected, I don't know. If the bank have admitted losing the deeds then you'd think they were responsible for the loss of value as well in which case the Ombudsman has a very important part ot play in getting your parents back to where they should be financially.

Ian_W

I'm sorry, I know it's not very helpful and I can't add to anything DoozerG said but this really made me giggle:

Tishdy wrote: »

Following a number of conversations over the period August to October it emerged the bank had LOST the deeds to the house (something you may think unthinkable as we did!) it took a number of weeks to get the bank to admit the mistake.

Given they lost billions of pounds quite recently I'd have thought losing a set of house deeds would be childs play to them!

Reading the rest of your post would the bank's name happen to begin with L? In my experience that's their MO - offer 50 quid and a load of waffle and hope you go away. Don't accept, if they agreed to safe keep the deeds they are responsible for their loss and any subsequent cost in replacing them.

One thought, probably unlikely - did the mortgage lender keep a copy or the solicitor who advised on their purchase or brokers if they ever remortgaged?

Richard_Webster

When did parents buy house and what local authority district is it in?

If not registered then first thing is to check if the solicitors who acted for them still have any documents. They may have copies which could be sued. Has anyone got any copies of documents? If so, what documents?

If the Bank have admitted that they have lsot the deeds then they need to produce a statutory declaration explaining this and explaining how they checked for the missing deeds that they carried out - it should also set out clearly that they acknowledge they received the deeds on such and such a date.

Does the mortgage lender have any information about what documents were sent to the bank?

The bank are clearly liable for the legal costs of reconstituting the title and for any indemnity insurance necessary because of missing documents or because the Land Registry will only give a possessory title.

DVardysShadow

Richard_Webster wrote: »

If not registered then first thing is to check if the solicitors who acted for them still have any documents. They may have copies which could be sued.

Solicitor's freudian slip? Or has Richard started suing things which don't move as well as anything which does? :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Tishdy

Thanks for all comments so far,

Richard to respond to yours, my parents bought the house in ~1974 (not too sure) and is in the East Riding of Yorkshire (unless it was North Humberside at that time, not sure)

Unfortunately solicitors don't have any of the documents, the only thing my Dad found was a copy of a letter of when they bought the house with everyones signatures on.

The bank have written to the solicitors to say they have lost the deeds, but it is the statutory declaration that is still outstanding I believe. Is this declaration something that is difficult to prepare? My parents have been waiting on the bank to do this for over 10 weeks now!

Nobody has mentioned indemnity insurance as far as I know, this is a useful lead thankyou, I will chase up on this.

The mortgage lender spoke to my Dad and gave the dates they were sent and also that it was the full set of documents that they had on file (deeds etc.)

Tishdy