house deeds storage

mrs_deadline

Beware, if you dispose of them and later get embroiled in a legal or planning dispute, the Land Registry will make you pay for the privilege of accessing your own deeds (especially any historic ones), it isn't free of charge I don't think.

jackson3

Yes my deeds were kept by Halifax Bank for free Needed them to register the house and they charged me £50....

SevenOfNine

barak wrote: »

This is simply not true! It was only during the 1990s that compulsory registration was introduced when properties were sold or mortgaged. Anyone who has been living in the same property for many years might be living in an unregistered property, and without what people call "The Deeds" could have difficulty in proving ownership. For more details see -

http://www.landreg.gov.uk/register_dev/
and
http://www.landregistry.gov.uk/register_dev/voluntary/

Barak is absolutely correct, my mother has lived in her ex council house for 56 years, we only registered it with Land Registry 2 years ago. So it was only THEN that her deeds were no longer the important documents they once were.

Nationwide have ours, we were told to leave £1 outstanding on our mortgage (& they generously don't charge interest on it), and for that they will store our deeds free. Though I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't try to slide in a redemption fee if we ever paid the £1 and requested our deeds (or at the very least an inflated postage charge to send them to us or the local branch).

If they were charging annually for this service I'd simply keep them in the house. It's registered with Land Registry and I don't see why I should pay for someone to pretend the deeds need safe storage - they don't as long as the property is registered.

Biggles

barak wrote: »

It was only during the 1990s that compulsory registration was introduced when properties were sold or mortgaged.

In fact, I understood that the actual date varied from one local council area to another and the phasing in of compulsory registration began as early, I think, as the 70s in some areas, and it was some time in the 90s before all areas were included.

Mojisola

angelatgraceland wrote: »

Maybe keep the original deeds in a safe and let the solicitors or the bank have the copies! I dont trust any of them either. Ive been pondering this problem last couple of years-even though we have years of mortgage left-may stick with the small mortgage option for a while when the time comes-but then again-would need to think on that some more-think the £30 is wellspent on a box!

If you have a mortgage I don't think you will be able to keep your deeds. The mortgage company keeps them to make sure their money is secure.

boltongirl1

Depends who your mortgage is with initially mine was with Abbey then switched to Nationwide. Abbey didn't want the deeds and Nationwide never asked for them so they are in a tin in the loft

SevenOfNine

mrs_deadline wrote: »

Beware, if you dispose of them and later get embroiled in a legal or planning dispute, the Land Registry will make you pay for the privilege of accessing your own deeds (especially any historic ones), it isn't free of charge I don't think.

You can access anyone's deeds through Land Registry (as long as the property is registered) - it cost about £2.50! I got my Mum's neighbours so I could check out some boundary issues (it even showed me who their mortgage was with).

Mojisola

boltongirl1 wrote: »

Depends who your mortgage is with initially mine was with Abbey then switched to Nationwide. Abbey didn't want the deeds and Nationwide never asked for them so they are in a tin in the loft

Is that because the house is registered with the Land Registry?

Jennifer_Jane

I have kept (but not kept anywhere particularly safe) my deeds for interest, but also did check that they are on the Land Registry. I think it was free to check. Agree with Lisyloo, Seven-Day-Weekend and others about this.

Mrs_Money

We paid Halifax about £50 a couple of years ago to get our deeds back when we paid off the mortgage. We have them kept at home in a file - purely just for "quaint" interest - they are fairly old.
But at the time, we were told that there is actually no need to have them at all (that indeed ours may no longer even actually exist!) and that the Land Registry store everything electronically anyway.

We have to ask, why are people are paying for storage at all?