Property Deeds

I was concerned about having no deeds when I sold my last house. My solicitor assured me that was no problem and they could get copies. It turned out the bank I had the mortgage with (and paid off ten years earlier) had kept the deeds.

I tried to get the deeds of my house, which is over 200 years old, and was told they were lost. I suppose the Land Registry didn’t exist years ago and the deeds were held by the owner.

The solicitors we dealt with 45 yrs ago were no longer in business when I began to think about selling the house. I found who had taken over but they couldn't find the deeds. Lots of phonecalls and a new solicitor appointed and at last he found the original register from which he managed to extract the relevant information for about £5 a page.
I was keen to know exactly where the boundary is and rights of way etc.

1. Are they still living? Can they remember their solicitor or bank at the time. Either may still have them. Did they have a mortgage? Lender would have asked for them, and not returned them on completion of mortgage, but they will be able to provide proof of ownership
2. Presumably you paid cash and no deeds then? But did you register? Check with Land registry, it is just possible that it was registered at their purchase, depending on where it is.

FranP

1. Are they still living? Can they remember their solicitor or bank at the time. Either may still have them. Did they have a mortgage? Lender would have asked for them, and not returned them on completion of mortgage, but they will be able to provide proof of ownership
2. Presumably you paid cash and no deeds then? But did you register? Check with Land registry, it is just possible that it was registered at their purchase, depending on where it is.

I suspect that the OP's purchase of the property may have been an agreement between relatives and not done through a solicitor. In which case it may not have been registered with the Land registry. They may have to apply for possessory title.

I think FranP's questions are worth following up.

All property sales have had to be registered with the LR since, IIRC, 1986. We bought a property in that year and never had any deeds, not even when the mortgage was paid off.

Our current house is over 300 years old and though we do have some deeds for it, dating back to the 1920s, I'm not altogether sure why we do as it was purchased in 1994.

The LR only has some deeds (they don't have ours for a start 😀) so they may be no help at all.

Deeds may appear to be useless now but they can be a great resource for local historians. I'd suggest that if anyone has unwanted deeds they pass them to their local authority's Records Office. Someone might be interested in them at some time in the future.

Direct of this with DH’s family home. His DM had taken the deeds from the bank at some stage and they had subsequently disappeared (she had dementia). Property had been bought before the era of registered land.
Land Registry have a system for dealing with this. It takes a while because land registry are so slow at everything but DH managed it himself without needing a solicitor, except for one small step. There are forms to fill-in and they do have to be completed carefully, but it’s just a matter of proving that you have titled to the property (through grant of probate or similar) and then proving that you are that person (This is where you may need a solicitor to sign the form).
I don’t think you’ll be able to complete a sale without this so I would say start as soon as possible by following the information on the Land Registry website.

4allweknow

My DH died 3 years ago. Property in joint names and I was beneficiary. I had to instruct a solicitor to have the Deeds transferred solely into my name. Cost a small fortune eg over £1K for that one transaction House was a new build and only 12 years old at the time.

I’m sorry you had to do this - I was executor for my DD and it was a relatively simple process to transfer the property into DM’s ownership, once I had the grant of probate. It might be more complicated if there is a mortgage or finance involved though.

Milest0ne

I have registered with the Land Registry to be informed if anyone tries to view our deeds/ registration. I received an email to say no one has tried recently

Always worth having that free notification of if "there has been activity on your account".

It doesn't necessarily stop any illicit activity in its tracks though I have to say. When I had a recent "confirmation all is okay" email through it - it said there WAS activity on my account!!!!

The "activity" turned out to be the neighbouring house underneath mine was having its modern-day title plan etc done in the first place (ie because it had been in the same ownership for quite some time and so hadnt got a modern title plan yet). Reason I was notified was because that new neighbour had decided to try and steal part of my garden!! They'd not breathed a word to me - eg offering to buy any of my garden off me. They'd just decided to steal it and the "activity" was the LR solicitors trying to take it off my title plan !! and transfer it to their title plan instead!!

So imo it's worth it to get the neighbours modern-day title plan too (if they have one by now - which most houses will do).

I had the last laugh though - my house is set a few feet higher than "thief house" - and I have a retaining wall in between us and it needs some (very expensive - we are talking well into 5 figures I estimate) repair or replacement work needing doing on that at some point and that bill will now fall due to that house (whereas it would have been the responsibility of my house). I feel pretty certain that what they were after grabbing was a rather wider section of my garden (ie my side of my retaining wall) and they didn't manage to grab that - as it simply made no sense whatsoever to grab my retaining wall ownership off me - they had nothing to gain from doing that.

So they have the bill due to fall to them and the owner of my house (me and those before me) has been walking along the top of my retaining wall for well over 20 years for necessary maintenance of the adjacent bit of my garden - which I obviously still have to do and so I do.

I've stuck another "layer of protection" around my house "paperwork" now - summat to the effect of anyone trying to do any more alteration of my title plan has to prove they are me - and, if they are not me they won't be able to obviously.

Thank you everyone, some really useful information to follow up 🙏🏼