where do you keep your House Deeds?

kruez

Hi,

As the title suggests where's the best place to keep house deeds.

Many thanks

amyandoli

hello,

ours are with our soliciters :-)

dolce_vita

Mine are on the top of my wardrobe along with piles of other paperwork.

theGrinch

isnt it all moving to electronic storage these days? the solicitor, accountant, bank or building society can store them.

Uncle_Fester_2

In a filing cabinet at Home (Not fire proof though).

Optimist

The deeds are just a curiosity nowadays everything is held electronically by the land registry. However interesting to keep

Debt_Free_Chick

A couple of observations ....

You will only have "electronic deeds" if your ownership of the property has been registered with the Land Registry. Registration has been compulsory since, about, 2002 I think. If your property is not registered with the LR then the paper deeds are the only proof you have that you actually own the property. If you're in this position and concerned, you can register your property with the LR voluntarily - but I think there's a fee.

Once registered, the paper deeds are generally only of historical interest, as you don't need them to prove ownership (registration on the LR does that). However, it's common for only some details to be transferred from the paper deeds to the entry in the Land Registry. There might be some detail in the paper deeds which you might find useful in the future especially details about boundaries, access rights, easements & covenants etc. Whilst these details are usually transferred, it's sometimes the case that some are omitted. So you may find it helpful to keep the paper deeds in case of any dispute.

We recently had a minor disagreement with a neighbour about the boundary of our property, which adjoins their drive (over which we have access). It was only the paper deeds that described the access drive as being "of 18 feet wide" ... which meant we were able to establish where the drive ended and our property began. This bit of detail (of 18 feet wide) was not transferred to the electronic register.

HTH

Richard_Webster

The Land Registry stuff - proof of ownership etc that was in the "deeds" is all kept electronically.

Mortgage lenders increasingly do not want the paper, but this sometimes means that important documents like leases get lost and you have to apply to the Land Registry for an official copy. Mostly these copies are OK, but occasionally their only copy is a manky carbon copy that some solicitor supplied in 1960 that is now unreadable. With more recent documents we sometimes find that the scanning company the Land Registry employed lost some of the pages so the official copy actually has bits missing. Ii have had to supply paper copies to the Registry on occasion to improve the quality of their official copies.

Trouble is that there is usually some ancillary stuff like planning permissions or a consent from a builder under covenants for an extension, that cannot be replaced electronically and may have to be purchased again, sometimes at significant cost.

This other stuff can easily thought not to be important but it is only when you are selling and the buyer's solicitor wants to see it that you regret chucking it out!

As a conveyancing solicitor I believe the information given in the post to be useful but I accept no liability except to fee-paying clients