47 years later

SilasMarner

Good Afternoon,
Fairly basic question for those in the know. Coming to the end of my mortgage ( I aint proud - I'm an OAP who's paid a zillion in interest. ) What happens these days? Do I get an official document still representing the deeds or is all electronically sorted out. How do I know I have a proper title to an unencumbered house?  Is it best to leave the documents with my solicitor along side the will or squirrel it away in the safe under the stairs? For the record it's with Santander. Thanks for your help.

user1977

What country is the property in? Is the title registered?

SilasMarner

Thanks. Just a normal English mortgage with Santander as far as I'm aware.

Marmaduke123

When we paid off our mortgage (quite a few years ago) the building society held the paper deeds. At some point, I can't remember exactly when, the property was registered with the Land Registry.

The building society wrote to us offering to store the deeds if we left something like 50p outstanding on the mortgage. We took them up on this at the time, but more recently discovered through this website that it showed as a charge on the Land Registry title, which might cause delays when the property eventually came to be sold.

With some difficulty we tracked down the deeds and asked for the charge to be removed and the deeds returned to us. They didn't ask us to pay the 50p, sent us the paper deeds, and removed the charge.

If your property is registered with the Land Registry that is your proof of ownership, and the paper deeds are just of historic interest. Ours were interesting, even though our house was built in the 1960s. If your house isn't registered the paper deeds are your only proof of ownership.

I should think Santander will write to you.

MWT

SilasMarner said:

Good Afternoon,
Fairly basic question for those in the know. Coming to the end of my mortgage ( I aint proud - I'm an OAP who's paid a zillion in interest. ) What happens these days?

These days the most you will get is a random collection of documents which is just the paper contents of the file they still had for your mortgage, none of which is likely to actually be a deed, but some of which may be of interest, so worth sorting through.

The least you will get is confirmation that the mortgage has ended and the charge removed, then you can check the veracity of that with the Land Registry, but it may take a few weeks before it is updated there.

There is no value in a deed for anything registered with the Land Registry, so nothing worth storing with your solicitors, just check that your property is registered.

maisie_cat

Once you establish that the property is registered with LR make sure you register with the property alert service

SilasMarner

Sorry for delay  Thank you for your very helpful replys