Document Retention

scoops82

Hi


I'm bringing myself up to date and scanning all my important documents.


What documents do you nee to keep a hared copy of, if any, after buying a house?


I have all the searches and drainage reports etc plus solicitor letters.


thanks

marksoton

IMO, the lot.

davidmcn

Or nothing.

I'm struggling to think of the last time the lack of a principal document has caused a problem.

Searches will be out of date by the next time you look at them, and often the "original" only existed as a pdf anyway.

eddddy

You probably won't need original hard copies of anything.

But if you are planning to rely solely on the electronic versions, give some thought to how / where you will store them. If you take sensible steps (maybe including cloud storage, for example), electronic storage can be safer and more convenient than many types of hard copy storage.

pathtofreedom

I kept everything I had when I bought my place, now I've just sold it I found out I was still missing things I needed, and had to get different indemnity policies to cover things even though I thought I had everything I needed. Examples are the certificate for the new boiler being put in, some electrical certificates when the kitchen was put in, fensa certificates which I thought I had an indemnity for already but turned out I didn't....

I'm when I finally move and complete on my new place I'm going to keep everything again, even though I seem to have twice as much paperwork this time, as it is not being able to get hold of some random certificate which slows down the whole process of selling as well.

davidmcn

pathtofreedom wrote: »

I kept everything I had when I bought my place, now I've just sold it I found out I was still missing things I needed, and had to get different indemnity policies to cover things even though I thought I had everything I needed. Examples are the certificate for the new boiler being put in, some electrical certificates when the kitchen was put in, fensa certificates which I thought I had an indemnity for already but turned out I didn't....

I'm when I finally move and complete on my new place I'm going to keep everything again, even though I seem to have twice as much paperwork this time, as it is not being able to get hold of some random certificate which slows down the whole process of selling as well.

But for all of these things, in my experience copies are fine - there's nothing legally advantageous about being able to produce the original planning permission printed on the council's special pink paper etc. I wouldn't get hung up about storing the principals unless storage space was at a premium (though I'd probably still do so just for convenience and because paper hasn't yet become an obsolete file format).