Getting hold of house deeds.

W.Ford

We've finally paid off the mortgage on our 1940s house, and I was eagerly awaiting a big deeds documents to land on my doormat at some point. All we've received is a single page mortgage deed, which appears to be a doc we signed when taking out the mortgage, and another single sheet from the HM Land registry headed as 'Official copy of register of title'.

Is that all you get? I was hoping to get something with maps showing our house boundaries etc. is there something else I need to do?

canaldumidi

Yup! In most cases there is nothing more than a copy of the electronic register at the LR which has long ago replaced paper deed as proof of property ownership.

Tiglet2

If the lender had the 'old' deeds and transfers/conveyances in storage, they will send them to you once their charge has been discharged, but Land Registry do not keep original deeds once a copy is uploaded onto their system.

p00hsticks

W.Ford said:

We've finally paid off the mortgage on our 1940s house, and I was eagerly awaiting a big deeds documents to land on my doormat at some point. All we've received is a single page mortgage deed, which appears to be a doc we signed when taking out the mortgage, and another single sheet from the HM Land registry headed as 'Official copy of register of title'.

Is that all you get? I was hoping to get something with maps showing our house boundaries etc. is there something else I need to do?

As well as the title register which you have, the Land Registry will amost certainly hold a title plan, which is the 'map showing our house boundaries etc' that you are looking for.

If this exists then you can search for it and then download a copy from the registry for £3 here

https://eservices.landregistry.gov.uk/eservices/FindAProperty/view/QuickEnquiryInit.do

daveyjp

Depends how long ago you paid the mortgage as it can take weeks to get the actual deed packet back.

We received ours eventually with all paperwork from when the house was originally built.

Slithery

How long ago did you purchase?
Your lender may not have the original copies of the deeds if the property was already registered with LR.

Johnhowell

You may need to check with previous solicitors/mortgage lenders to see who may have the original deeds.  We had to go back three mortgage lender/solicitors before locating them.

So much more information in the original deeds than that transcribed into the Land Registry version.  Different purposes/different results...  And sometimes the attached plan has other information about the property than a basic Ordnance Survey base plan...  Ours has the drainage shown! :-)  Which provided proof of the presence of soakaway so we can now claim the Surface Water Rebate... don't get this from Land Registry...

If you look in the LR version of the Title Register, see if there are any "copy held" statements after references to previous conveyances/transfers.  If there are then you can purchase the copies, but not from the online website - have to fill out a form and I think they cost ~£10 a document, or used to...

Hopefully, nobody destroyed them... hence my recommendation that everyone should get hold of these before they disappear for good.

Good luck.

JGB1955

We paid our mortgage off c.1998 (thanks to a redundancy pay-out from Nat West).  It was a staff mortgage.  The original conveyancing (1985) had been dealt with by their legal department in Birmingham.  Come our request for 'the deeds' there was a frantic struggling around several branches that my husband had worked at... before finding them languishing in a safe at their Westminster City Hall branch  It was good to see his ex-employer prove their incompetence....  I am SO glad that we have the originals...just from a 'family history' point of view.

youth_leader

I hadn't realised I didn't have to hand over the old paper deeds when I sold my house, I wish I'd known.