Lost deeds and house not registered on Land Registry

[MimiGC]

My elderly parents have lost the deeds to their house. When I tried to help them get a replacement copy, we found that their house is not on the Land Registry. I looked into it, but got a bit stuck and couldn't work out how to get replacement deeds when the house isn't on LR or get the house put on the LR without a copy of the deeds.
Does anyone know if it's possible to resolve this problem ourselves or whether we need to engage a property lawyer to sort it out? Thanks.

Have you contacted the solicitors who acted when they purchased? Even if it was decades ago, the files should have been retained and may contain copies.
This should be the case even if firms have been bought out/wound up. You may need to do some digging but the files should not have been destroyed. It might be that you can go ahead without this, but it might be worth investigating, particularly if the firm is local.

Just as an aside

ive had to employ a solicitor to change the deeds of a house. As I wasn’t moving and not in a rush I shopped around. The difference in price was

£720
£980
£1290
£1480

fir the exact same job

just be aware that solicitors will vary greatly in price

about £150 was for admin costs and the rest to the solicitor for the work

i worked in an archive and it wasn’t unusual for people to have list deeeds and contact us for help

Mortgage statements are useful for proof of ownership
electoral register for proof of abode

obv your letter from the bank stating they lost the deeds - they can still be asked to pay to put this correct, it was their mistake regardless and it doesn’t appear they have tried to correct it after all this time

i take it the house hadn’t been sold since 1929?

Why 1929?

Compulsory registration on purchase only applied across the whole of England and Wales from 1990.

If it’s a normal suburban property the plan will exist by default by virtue of all the registered boundaries that surround it.

They have clearly been there since before December 1990 since that is when registration became compulsory. Law firms won’t keep files that far back. They might have kept actual deeds but the OP has said that the bank held the deeds and then lost them.

Many houses we had that weren’t registered with land registry were not sold from before 1929.

1929 if I remember correctly was when LR started and properties started to be registered. Then obviously they were later listed digitally but if the house hadn’t been registered then there’d not be the original paperwork to digitise

Is there no alternative register? I'm in Scotland and our deeds didn't show in the land register but I filled out a form and they were located on the sasine register.

The legislation is 1925 but compulsory registration was December 1990

Bullrushes, I don't think that's quite right.
The 1925 Land Registration Act meant that some areas were compulsorily registerable much earlier than 1990. Even since 1990, registration was only compulsory on transfer, broadly speaking.
Solicitors are obliged to keep all purchase files. Or they certainly were when I was practising ( up until 2010).

Compulsory first registration varied by county. Norfolk and Cambridgeshire were some of the last. London was the first I think.

Oh absolutely. But it's not clear whether that is the case here or not

It's fair, I deal with lots of ecclesiastical property etc that has often not changed hands for hundreds of years.

But with residential property it's just more likely that the house was in an area that was one of the later areas to move to compulsory registration, and was purchased before 1990 (or whenever the compulsory registration date was for their region)

Thank you to all have who have tried to help.
It's a small bungalow, there aren't any complications with the plot, as far as I know. They have the plans showing the boundaries. I think they bought it in the 1980s or 90s. The mortgage is paid off.

My house is one of only 2 houses on a private lane, they took my neighbours deeds and Google maps and did a rough outline and asked if I thought it looked right. Me being a random first time buyer. Could be an interesting sale when the time comes 😆

I bought an unregistered house in Sept 23. Finally received conf of registration 14 months later.

That's a pretty quick turnaround for any property purchase to be registered at the moment, whether it was unregistered or already on the register

Suffolk was one of the last areas scooped up in the final push of compulsory registration. Some of us are experienced unregistered property lawyers by virtue of where we practice.

Copies of the deeds won't exist anywhere, these only exist normally when registered at the LR, which this property isn't. Have a go at the forms yourself, it sounds pretty straightforward. If your neighbours are helpful their deeds may show any covenants etc.

They don’t need to be helpful. Their covenants will show on the registered title deeds

Do you mind saying which county it’s in OP?

I agree re the covenants actually. If the bungalow is on a planned estate, the conveyances of all the bungalows when the builder first sold them are likely to have identical covenants, so it’s worth downloading a copy of next door’s.

Essex.

I’m not speaking from a legal perspective, just that it was people coming to the archive that didn’t have deeds and where looking to prove a house was there house etc

so I only dealt with them at that point and in many if there cases a house had stayed in the family from before 1920s

we used to also deal a lot in list baptism certificates for marriages, list exam certificates for schools - we didn’t keep them & lost tractor documents. People lose all sorts of stuff

If you’re finding the Land Registry forms tricky OP, it might just be worth your parents paying a solicitor.

Most of Essex had compulsory first registration in stages from 1985. Some areas were as early as 1977.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-registrations/practice-guide-1-first-registrations#when-land-became-subject-to-compulsory-registration

Look at section 8.1.

Thanks. I don't know why their house isn't on the Land Registry, all their neighbours are...