Historical house documents

Aliss08

I always assumed that if/when you pay off your mortgage you would received the deeds and any historical documents (i.e. names of owners from when house was built etc. and original plans etc.) that belong to the house. I now find out this isn't the case. Is there a way to get copies of documents relating to the original house (built c1908)? Personally I think the documents should be with the house. Probably not explaining this very well but hope someone can help me. Thanks

googler

I paid off my mortgage a year or so ago, on a house built in the early 1990s, and my lender sent me a package of deeds and other documents relating to it. It including a title plan, previous dispositions with names of owners thereon, but not a floorplan.

Why does your lender say they can't or won't do this?

phoebe1989seb

Many original documents have unfortunately been destroyed. When we bought our current property in 2007 without a mortgage our solicitor told us the deeds were no longer in existence and all we got was a copy of the title register. Our previous house - originally purchased outright although later mortgaged - came complete with some wonderful old documents dating back to when it was built in 1888. It seems such a shame that these pieces of social history are being destroyed needlessly when many people would be most interested in seeing/retaining them.

Aliss08

Thanks for your replies. I agree it is such a shame that these documents no longer exist. My lender has stated that they do not hold any documents relating to the house except the deeds obviously which are now online with the Land Registry hence a paper copy doesn't exist.

Hectors_House

Aliss08 wrote: »

I always assumed that if/when you pay off your mortgage you would received the deeds and any historical documents (i.e. names of owners from when house was built etc. and original plans etc.) that belong to the house. I now find out this isn't the case. Is there a way to get copies of documents relating to the original house (built c1908)? Personally I think the documents should be with the house. Probably not explaining this very well but hope someone can help me. Thanks

My folks had to pay a small fee to their bank once they paid down their mortgage as housing deeds are kept in secure facilities elsewhere.

The documents would only be with the house if all debt had been paid off by the person you bought from and you were not needing a mortgage (as it is your mortgage lender who owns the deeds until you pay off your loan).

SmlSave

I'm afraid you've got it wrong Hector. Most of the banks dematerialised some years ago and therefore sent the deeds they were holding back to the property owners or to the Land Registry. Some decided to cash in and hold them so that they could charge to release them later.

It is very very rare for banks to hold deeds now.

geoffky

my solicitors hold mine, we got a letter when we bought saying they would hold them for us for a nominal fee..i think we paid £25 for ever..

milliebear00001

I recently completed on my house (Victorian) and was very surprised to receive a package a couple of weeks later from my solicitor containing all the deeds, covenants and historical documents relating to all the ownership down the ages. It is full of history relating to my town and the house I've bought - fantastic, although I too thought these were held by the mortgage company until paid off.

neverdespairgirl

My parents have a huge bundle of fascinating stuff about their house - details of all the fields / fences / house / outbuildings from when it was sold by auction in the 1860s, and a lot of documents from the mid 18th century, as there was a court case about ownership of the house and lots of documents were gathered together. There's even a copy of Zepplin air-raid insurance from the first world war!

mutter

I'm off to Barclays in the morning to "discuss" the whereabouts of the deeds to my parents house, which they've been paying £18 a year for them to keep safely, but which Barclays can't find.

Richard_Webster

It really is sheer chance whether or not you will get a historic set of "deeds".

Just because a house is "old" it does not necessarily mean there will be much in the way of old documents relating to it. It is only when property was split off from a larger area and sold that a new set of "deeds" was created. Since compulsory registration even this doesn't happen. So a house that was built in 1500 and part of a landed estate until sold off in 2000 could have no unregistered deeds at all.

If the house was built after Land Registration became compulsory in the area in question - this varies between 1899 in parts of London down to 1990 in some more rural areas - then there are unlikely to be any pre-registration "deeds" but there may or may not be a set of copy planning permissions and other documents that will be needed when the house is sold. So the thousands of Middlesex semis in Metroland if sold after 1937 wouldn't have any unregistered deeds because they would have been subject to compulsory registration when built.

If built before compulsory registration it will depend. Up to the 1930s apart from more upmarket properties most people rented so in the early 20th century and in late Victorian times it was common for a builder to buy a plot of land form local landowner and put up a number of houses. So there would be a conveyance to him of the piece of land. He built the houses and let them out on short term tenancies.

These short term lets went on until the 1950s-70s when it became uneconomic for landlords with the Rent Acts then in force and when tenants died the landlords sold the houses. If the developer's family still owned the block of say 10 houses and they sold one the buyer would not get the original "deeds" but only copies of them. So there might be a conveyance to the first buyer in the 1950s-70s and conveyances from owner to owner until the area became one where compulsory registration applied.

I have an estate near where I live where the builder built in the 1930s-70s but some of the older ones were initially tenanted, so even in the 1980s I acted for people buying from the builder when a tenant had died. Southampton was an area of compulsory registration from the end of 1975 so the first buyer would only have only had copies and these would probably have got lost when a house changed hands.

Initially these documents would have been sent to the lenders but since 2003 lenders have not wanted them and so some people have simply kept any that there happened to be and not passed them on when the houses was sold as they didn't have to do so.

Also the "free" remortgage service offered by some lenders has resulted in sets of deeds being sent to large factory conveyancing operations who may or may not have sent the older unwanted documents back to the borrowers. In some cases people treasured them as of historic interest, in other cases they got thrown away!