What do House Deeds look like/ contain?

[GreatGooglyMoogly]

I have a whole pile of paperwork with regards to our house and I'm trying to find the Deeds but I have no idea what they look like! TIA.

is your property registered or unregistered? if registered, you can order a copy of the title from the land registry for a few quid. most residential properties these days are registered - it has been compulsory for many years to register unregistered land on events such as sales/purchases.

if unregistered land then, yes, there will still be title deeds. most likely they will be stored with your solicitor or bank.

Oh, so we won't have any Deeds at home ourselves? I have no idea whether it's registered or unregistered!

it'll almost certainly be registered. for most straightforward titles, all you need is a copy of the title from the land registry. anyway, you can check here:

www.landregistry.gov.uk/wps/portal/Property_Search

If your house has been brought / sold within the last 20 years then you are almost certainly registered. Deeds if they exist will not be much more than a historical document.

The link posted above is to the land registry and whilst they have a record of the title to your property, its not actually the deeds themselves - the deeds are usually retained by the bank / building society when you take out the mortgage. There will be all sorts of historical papers, mortgage deeds, leases if there has been a lease etc.

that's not correct mandy. if the property is a registered title then a copy of the title register is adequate evidence of title in most cases (there may be the odd exception where there are additional documents but not in most cases).

deeds and suchlike are of historical interest only, unless your property is one of the few unregistered titles left. most residential properties are registered now because registration has been compulsory on the sale of properties for many years.

Oh! So if you had ... um ... misplaced the deeds to your house, you wouldn't have to pay a fortune getting new deeds drawn up then, if they don't turn up before the sale?

A copy of the "deeds" aka the Official Copy of Register of Title should be part of your mortgage documents given to you when you bought the house. The solicitor who handled the purchase should also have a copy. If no one can find them you can get a copy from the Land Registry for not very much money. A copy should be all you need. When you sell the house and the sellers pay you and you pay your mortgage, the bank will send the official document to the new buyer's bank (maybe via the lawyers or estate agents....).

Registered Title at the Land registry (is supposed to) make it all very much easier. It's like having a car registered at Swansea. If you lose the documents you can ask for a duplicate.

I was selling a house in the Autumn that had been in the family for three generations, the solicitors keeping the deeds photocopied them for me earlier in the year, them mis-filed them and claimed I'd taken them away. It cost quite a bit of money get it registered with incomplete documents, and I had to swear that the boundaries were correct. After which the stupid useless timewasting solicitors found the documents in their safe.

p.s. by which time the buyer seems to have got bored with waiting

Thanks for replies, very reassuring :)

PigletJohn, I hope your buyer reappears!

We misplaced our deeds and requested a copy from both our bank and solicitor. the bank said that they sent the deed to the solicitor and the solicitor said that they sent it back to us after we had gotten the mortgage. they are both did. therefore the copy that was misplaced by us was the original one. is there any way we can get another copy because we need to sell our property. the land is registered

if it is registered then the official version recorded at the land registry is the "real" one and they can print you a new copy.

The old bits of paper are of historical interest only.

Didn't know you could order them from land registry yourself for £4

The solicitor charged me £18 for a copy