What to house deeds actually look like?

[LittenTree]

Are they pages thick?

I -ahem- am not actually sure where ours are (12 year old house we've owned for 3 years)! I need to lodge them somewhere safe and will once I find them but I am wondering if they're actually called something different to 'The Deeds'!

Should add we bought the house outright so they're not in a bank's vaults.

[mumblechum1]

You don't get paper deeds any more. Your ownership is electronically registered at the Land Registry. If you particularly want to look at them you can download Office Copy Entries from the LR website for £4, plus another couple of quid if you want a copy of the plan.

Must admit I miss the old days of going over ancient handwritten parchment deeds going back to 1720 or whatever.

[avenueone]

I have paper deeds, just paid off the morgage and the bank sent them to me as they had them.

[mumblechum1]

The bank just send out pre-registration stuff because they don't want to have to store them.

Tbh, if you particularly want to hang on to paper copies of anything, that's fine, and sometimes it's helpful if there is background which doesn't show up on the OCE, but it's not usually necessary, and certainly when you come to sell, the purchasers will just go by what's on the electronic register.

[LittenTree]

Thanks! So it's possible that there are no actual paper deeds for the place? It is 12 odd years old. In all the kerfuffle of buying and trawling through endless bits of paper at the solicitor's, neither of us can actually remember if and where we have Deeds!

[throckenholt]

The deeds are often kept with the mortgage company (so at the bank), or with a solicitor. Come to think of it - I don't know where ours are !

I had the ones for my mum's house for a while - now with the solicitor pending completion of sale, and they were a bundle of papers. Sounds like your might be too recent to have paper copies. You could check with the Land Registry.

[IamtheZombie]

I have the paper deeds for my house. They help paint a picture of its history. If I ever sell, I will give them to the new owners and hope that they appreciate this information as much as I do.

[LittenTree]

My house is only about 12 years old. Through 'home improvements' are already throwing up anomalies! What are those wires in the walls for? MI5? Luckily a local elderly couple who bought off the plans (it's an estate) were able to tell us that this house was originally used as the estate office so they were probably intercom wires we've unearthed.

There's also a poor bit of (luckily hidden) plastering- wondering what was there?

[mumblechum1]

In the old days there were Charge Certificates and Land Certificates, depending on whether you had a mortgage or not. These were A3 documents in pale blue or pale brown bindings. So some people will have those, but if your house is only 12 years old I'm pretty certain that you won;t have deeds. There may be some other papers, such as local searches, bankruptcy and Land searches but they aren't actually deeds. Deeds are documents which are signed by the parties and witnessed.

You will have signed a Transfer Deed (TR1) when you bought your house, but as I say, it's the Land Registry Office Copy Entries which actually matter.

[mycatlikestwiglets]

Compulsory registration of land came into force in 1990 so it's highly unlikely that your property will have "deeds" as such if it's only 12 years old. You prove ownership via the land registry entry these days.

Owners of older houses might still have their original deeds but if the house has been sold since 1990 they will have historical value only as the land will now be registered. They're still quite nice to have as they'll show all past ownership of the property but you don't actually need them.

[TiAAAAARGHo]

You won't have deeds for the house if you only bought it 3 years ago. You can get a copy of your house registration (essentially the replacement for deeds) from the land registry for £4.

[LittenTree]

Thanks very much, all. I was sort of wondering how and why I'd been so careless with such an apparently important document!!....cos I never possessed it!