How do I prove the house is mine?

Darnhall123

Apologies to everyone reading this if it comes across as a stupid question…..

I paid off my mortgage in January 2025.

All I have to "prove" this is a letter from HSBC saying that they'd received my last ever payment.

Hooray!! 🎉🎉

A year on though, that's all I have. That letter. And all that basically says is, i've paid the loan off that I had with them. It doesn't say that the property is mine.

Maybe i'm living in the dark ages, but shouldn't I have a document(s) or something?

Deeds to the property??

I know the house is mine and no money owed on it, but if I come to sell it (or even worse I drop down dead!!), how will I prove that the house is mine with no physical paperwork??

Once again, apologies if i'm coming across as an idiot, but I would truly appreciate an answer!

South_coast

Search the Title on the Land Registry for £3. It will show your name only

Darnhall123

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81880971#Comment_81880971

Thanks for the quick reply.

Shouldn't I have deeds or something though? I'm sure when my mother was left a property back in the 1980s, she was given a stack of paper deeds to the house.

caprikid1

"Thanks for the quick reply.

Shouldn't I have deeds or something though? I'm sure when my mother was left a property back in the 1980s, she was given deeds to the house."

You are right, living in the dark ages, paper copies were done away with years ok.

I live in a 400 year old house, no one know's where the deeds are !

Tree_pipe99

You can pay Land Registry for a copy of the deeds. Be warned they are painful to deal with for a lot of people.

After I paid my mortgage off I think I paid about a fiver to land registry to download a PDF copy.

Darnhall123

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81880990#Comment_81880990

Thank you 👍👍

Keep_pedalling

The cost to download a record is now £7, but be careful as a Google search will lead your to sites that charge a lot more but look official. The link you need is here

https://www.gov.uk/get-information-about-property-and-land/copies-of-deeds

If the land registry have no record then the property has never been registered and you will need to sort that out.

eddddy

As others have said, assuming that your property is registered with Land Registry in your name, that registration is proof that you own the property.

(And you can pay Land Registry £7 to download a copy of the Title Register which should show your name.)

As for the mortgage, HSBC has never owned any part or share of your property.

They lent you a chunk of money, and they would have put a charge on your property as security. That charge would have been registered with Land Registry. That would have meant that you could not have sold your property to somebody else without repaying the loan to HSBC.

Now you've repaid the loan, HSBC should remove the charge from your property.

When you download the title register, it should show any charges registered against your property.

• So if you had downloaded the Title Register before January 2015, it should have shown that the property had a charge registered against it by HSBC

• But if you download the Title Register now, it should show no charges registered against it. (If the HSBC charge is still shown, you should contact HSBC. Either they've 'forgotten' to remove the charge - or the removal process is moving very slowly.)

Cairnpapple

I'm assuming you're in England, but if you do happen to be in Scotland there is an extra step of discharging the standard security. It would be normal to use a solicitor to discharge the standard security but I think some Scottish people on this board have DIYed.

MyRealNameToo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81881074#Comment_81881074

If it had been a Hala Mortgage then it would have been different but HSBC pulled out in 2012 so presumably it wasnt.

Darnhall123

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81880990#Comment_81880990

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81881074#Comment_81881074

Thank you 👍👍