Deeds to our property

Ktsmum

Ours are held in deedstore by our mortgage company even though we are mortgage free, it costs us £15 per year

deedstore is unlikely to be available now. You just had to keep a pound owing back in the day and it had no fee. It was a good system when it was available. It stopped when deeds went digital, firstly in England and Wales and then Scotland when it went digital (former bank worker of 40 years who knows about these things). Deedstore unfortunately isn't an option now

Maggiemaybe

It was after reading Our House that I signed up for the Land Registry service, Witzend. My heart sank a bit when I had an email from them recently, but it was just to confirm that there’d been no activity. Phew!

Our deeds were sent to us by the Halifax when we paid off the mortgage. No charge.

Our local history society appealed recently to people not to throw away their deeds just because they no longer need to keep them. There’s a lot of historical interest in the older ones. Our whole street was once passed on to the owner’s grandchildren - it was interesting to see that while half of them were in low-paid manual jobs, one lived in a French chateau and another was married to a member of the aristocracy.

Many people have an interest in seeing paper deeds. They can be quite interesting. Nowadays Title to property tends to be electronic but paper deeds are of interest

gransruleok

My message should have been added to plantar fasciitis but landed in the article on house deeds, old age is great isn’t it!

That was funny though and incongruous on this thread!😁

My message should have been added to plantar fasciitis but landed in the article on house deeds, old age is great isn’t it!

The best advice my GP gave me was “don’t walk around barefoot”. I now wear ‘Theatre/nurses clogs’ indoors. Exercises can be found on the NHS website too. I find standing on a stair with just the ball of the foot on the stair, holding on to the banister, gently drop your weight and holding that position for 10 seconds to start building up to 30 is simple and very effective. Good luck.

SORTED
After some research I managed to find the solicitors who had taken over my solicitors who had done the conveyancing in 2007.
After one phone call to them a lady rang me back from their conveyancing department and explained what the statement meant on the information Land Registry had sent.
Restriction: no disposition etc Tenants in Common not Joint tenancy.
Now we can change our wills each leaving our assets to whom we preferred.

Our mortgage had been paid of some years before. We had just left work and were in retirement the same year we moved to this property.

Around 2008 I finished my mortgage with Nationwide.
They sent me the deeds. No charge.
I've never read them.

What a mess
Update on my original question.

My daughter kindly took over and downloaded everything that the GOV site land registry had for our property. It seems from the attachments that there are no deeds on their database for our property purchase in 2007.
I have found a letter I sent to our solicitor when purchasing the property thanking him for offering to keep our deeds safe which proves they are responsible for keeping the deeds for us.
When I contacted them a few years ago about a copy of the deeds I was told they didn't have them.
I'm clearly going to contact them but I guess our solicitor from that time is probably retired by now.
Failing this I am not sure what to do other than see another solicitor for advice which is going to cost me.
Helpful comments on what to do next would be appreciated.
Thank you

My daughter is sorting out getting the copy deed for me. I have already received the plan of where our property is so nearly there.
It's been quite an active response to my original question and I have read with interest your comments.
Jean

Contact the Land Registry. If your house is registered it will cost about £20.00.

This is very topical for me. After my husband died I tried to update my Will with the solicitors we had used several years ago, and who had the previous Will and the house deeds. I then discovered that they had been taken over by a large National company and had moved from my home town. I then did a new Will and LPAs with a local firm, and decided I would like the house deeds to be with the new company in order to keep everything together. So I had to chase up the larger company - emails, telephone calls. Eventually I was asked to five items of identification: Passport, selfie of me with passport held up, utility bill, husband's death certificate, updated Official Copy Register of Title (This item floored me a bit). Finally sent all this off. SUCCESS! The deeds arrived a few days ago, and are very interesting as they contain several covenants I had forgotten about. If everything is now with the Land Registry, how do you know about the covenants unless you have the deeds?

When I sold my old home, last year, the solicitor explained that these days most deeds have been transferred to the Land Registry's digital service and safely centralised. It took him 10 days to obtain digital copies.

I understand deeds are now kept on electronic memories. I guess any solicitor's assistant can tell you how to retrieve a paper or electronic copy.

Dizzyribs do you keep your rights active?

Ours are also beautifully bound and include a very large old key! They also state that we have the right to “pass and repass with manservant, maidservants cattle and kine” over our neighbours garden! (We’re on a main road through an old market town)

Ours were returned to us by Halifax Building Society when we paid off the mortgage. There was no charge. They are absolutely fascinating, and beautifully handwritten. We're in the process of selling the property at the moment, so we'll pass them onto the new buyers when the time comes.

Our deeds are held with our mortgage provider free as we agreed to have £50 outstanding on our mortgage. That was over 40 years ago and in that time have never needed to view them and the outstanding mortgage has jumped up all of £2.50! GSM has been mentioned above, what a goldmine, why did she go, anyone know?

Ditto

We’d been paying £15 a year for the solicitor who made our Wills to store the deeds to our house. When we moved house five years ago I told the conveyance solicitor I’d get the deeds out of storage but she said they are now digital and paper ones are no longer required which came a surprise to us. Shame cause as others have said the old ones were an interesting thick bundle of paperwork going back years.

We bought our property in 2010 and keep our deeds in a safety deposit box I bought from Costco along with those from another property I owned and later sold.

On leaving school I worked in a solicitor's office. One tear on I was allowed to type Deeds and then bind them on the side with purple ribbon. Typing was terrifying as absolutely no rubbing out allowed on the thick paper. Have bought a few properties since those days and the Deeds have always been disappointing, just plain white paper and stapled, now not even stapled.

2 years ago I sold and moved and I already had the deeds for my old house as I had paid the mortgage off years ago. However, the buyers solicitor never needed them as they were supposedly on the internet somewhere. (Although I was never aware of this as I had been in my house almost 43 years!). When I left the house, I left the deeds for the new couple as it had a lot of interesting stuff in there such as who had owned the house in the past.

Ours are held in deedstore by our mortgage company even though we are mortgage free, it costs us £15 per year

I think my mortgage provider holds the deeds until I pay it all off. I have a copy at home somewhere.