Deeds to House

bettydaviseyes

Thanks Flugelhorn. Its definitely the right property. Its never been sold before - only one owner which was was mum.

Keep_pedalling

Flugelhorn said:

bettydaviseyes said:

Have jp00hsticks said:

bettydaviseyes said:

Mum didnt have a mortgage it was paid off in the early 80’s and she owed nothing to the bank or anyone.  The deeds are held at the Halifax deed vault? I think and I remember now mum saying something years ago about £1. I will call the Halifax on Monday, although I cant find anything on Halifax web site about deeds enquiries.  Hopefully they are quicker than my bank at answering the phone -last time I was on hold for over 50 minutes.

As Keep_pedalling says, have you checked whether the property is registered with the Land Registry ?

https://www.gov.uk/search-property-information-land-registry

If it is then the deeds are interesting but won't be needed to complete the sale...

Have just checked - it says “we have found one property record” then it says we can purchase the title register and title plan.  Presumably that means we wont need to contact the Halifax now?  

if it is the right property and hence it has been registered with the LR then that is all you need, the old paper deeds became irrelevant when that was done. 

Unless the bank still has a restriction in place, in which case you will need to get the bank to remove it.

bettydaviseyes

Keep_pedalling said:

Flugelhorn said:

bettydaviseyes said:

Have jp00hsticks said:

bettydaviseyes said:

Mum didnt have a mortgage it was paid off in the early 80’s and she owed nothing to the bank or anyone.  The deeds are held at the Halifax deed vault? I think and I remember now mum saying something years ago about £1. I will call the Halifax on Monday, although I cant find anything on Halifax web site about deeds enquiries.  Hopefully they are quicker than my bank at answering the phone -last time I was on hold for over 50 minutes.

As Keep_pedalling says, have you checked whether the property is registered with the Land Registry ?

https://www.gov.uk/search-property-information-land-registry

If it is then the deeds are interesting but won't be needed to complete the sale...

Have just checked - it says “we have found one property record” then it says we can purchase the title register and title plan.  Presumably that means we wont need to contact the Halifax now?  

if it is the right property and hence it has been registered with the LR then that is all you need, the old paper deeds became irrelevant when that was done. 

Unless the bank still has a restriction in place, in which case you will need to get the bank to remove it.

Oh okay.  Thank you.  No one had mentioned the deed's - neither probate solicitors, or solicitors dealing with the sale.  It was just something I thought about earlier as I dont want anything our end to hold up the sale.

BooJewels

As I mentioned over the page, if there is a nominal mortgage remaining on the property **, this would need to be settled prior to the sale being completed - as there will be a charge on the property, saying that the Halifax have first dibs on a pound of the sale, as and when it's sold.  That was the document I mentioned - they supplied a sealed legal document to say that all charges on the property were settled in full and they had no further interest in it.

Although I would expect the conveyancing solicitor to ask you about this early in the process - there was a question about it in their initial fact-finding questionnaire when we signed for them to start the process.  So maybe they don't know about it - so you perhaps do need to speak to either your solicitor or the bank - just to ensure that it doesn't cause a snag later in the process.  It took me 3 or 4 weeks to sort it out - even though it was easy, there was a bit of back and forth with documents in the post - so it took as long as it took.

**  However, if you do download the Land registry documents, it will list the Halifax as being an interested party, so you'll be able to see from that if the charge does in fact still exist.

[Deleted User]

My dad had paid of his mortgage but Santander had a 0 charge on the house that showed on the land registry  as they held the original deeds in their vaults .

This  meant that my solicitors couldn’t proceed until Santander removed the 0
charge on the property and updated it with the land registry 

Santander were excellent  they just needed a copy of the will and the probate certificates and a short letter from me 
they started the process as I was on the phone 
took about 4 weeks in total and that included updating the land registry with the 0 charge removed .

if your parents like mine lived in the house a long time - my parents bought in 1978 the banks holding the deeds with a 0 charge or small charge was very common 

Oh and my dads property was registered with the land Registry even though Santander had a 0 charge on the property  

I actually got sent the deeds and they are amazing real piece of history for the house lots of information on the old style parchment paper 

[Deleted User]

Oh and don’t transfer the deeds to your name as registered owner in order to sell 

if your a first time buyer in the future you might find you could no longer be eligible for the reduction in stamp duty that first time buyers get 

SevenOfNine

Keep_pedalling said:

Brie said:

Did your mom still have a mortgage of any sort?  Or anything else owed to the bank??  

I think in the past people used to keep £1 outstanding and the lender would keep the deeds, which meant there was still a restriction registered on the property, so the OP should contact the bank to to clear any outstanding issues like this.

Exactly what my in-laws had. When the last one of them died Santander wouldn't remove the charge until we paid £1 even on sight of the death cert, at the time it just felt petty & unecessary to add stress for £1!  

bettydaviseyes

Just thought I would update everyone who kindly replied.  Called Halifax bereavement line this morning (45 minute wait to be answered). They checked, said they no longer have the deed store and there is nothing at all on their records relating to mum, so hopefully all is good our end in respect of a smooth sale - Fingers crossed!  Thank you.