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 they lived their a long time? Did their neighbours move in more recently? That's usually the reason.

@MimiGC compulsory registration only applied in Essex from 1st December 1990 so if they purchased before then they wouldn't have had to register the property. But anyone who purchased after that date would have had to register.

I'm not sure exactly when they bought it, it could have been before 1990, but when you buy a house, you don't have to register it yourself, do you? I didn't do that with my house.

No, the solicitors would do it.

If the mortgage was remortgageed or paid off before the mid 90’s, there was no compulsory registration, that’s how FiL’s house was never registered.

We bought our house in 1996 and it wasn’t until we remortgaged in 2000 that the house was registered and we got the Deeds through the post.
I’d hate to lose them, even though it’s now registered, the deeds are such a nice historical document to have. I now know that it was farmland until the 40’s, I know who built it in 1970 and who the orginal owner was and I love the old maps/plans of our village that are contained in the deeds.

Although my parents don't seem overly bothered by not having the deeds (as I said above, the loss happened several years ago and they did nothing about it then) they are thinking about the future. When they pass away, the house will be left to my sister and myself and though we don't really want to think about it in advance, we're worried about how difficult it might be to sell it without deeds and/or the lack of registration. My assumption is that it may prove to be a big legal mess at a time when we're bereaved and thus ill equipped to handle it. But I may be wrong and perhaps it doesn't really matter?

You can’t sell without either the deeds or registration.

Our conveyancers handed FiL’s deeds over to the buyer’s so they registered the house for the first time.

What you DON’T do, is register in your name after inheriting the house.

They need to get on and reconstruct the deeds and then register it now.

Tell them that People trawl the land registry looking for unregistered houses to steal.

It will be far harder to sort when they are gone as it will be much better if they can do the statement of truth and explain their long occupancy.
And most people would be very reluctant to buy unless the property was registered so it would affect ease and speed of selling and also value.

And also, as someone else has said, not registering the property makes them more vulnerable to fraud.

It's not hard to do, and if they want it to be simpler they can use a solicitor, but they are leaving you and your sister with quite a headache otherwise.

We had this problem 10 years ago why my mother died. Dad was convinced the deeds were with their solicitor from when the property was purchased in 1970 and unregistered. The solicitor said they didn't have them. I made an appointment for dad in case he needed to update his will. Lo and behold when we arrived the deeds were on the solicitor's desk. We then had the solicitor do the registration which cost about £400 for his work, plus the fee to the land registry (based on property value).