What to do after mortgage paid off?

[Llioed]

Hi, I was wondering if I could ask what happens after the mortgage is paid off? I have tried Googling it but I am confused.

My husband and I got this letter today and I am wondering did anyone else bother getting the “registered title” - what does this actually mean?

Will the deeds be sent to us automatically?
if someone could please shed some light on what we need to do, I would appreciate that.

Thank you in advance.

The building society sent mine back to me after the mortgage was cleared.

Thanks for responding @Chasingsquirrels - we will wait and see if we get it in the post, if that’s the case.

The land registry is all online now, so as I understand it you no longer need to worry about having or storing the paper deeds. When we finished paying our mortgage the building society sent us out deeds in the post. I was pretty disappointed with them - out house isn't that old, so nothing very exciting to look at. I would love to see the deeds of older houses.

Yep, it's all online now. We received an email with a copy of ours.

The "registered title" is a two page print off that you can get from the Land Registry portal. It says what the property is, who owns it, any restrictions on it and any mortgages it is subject to. They've suggested you get a copy so you can see confirm for yourself that their mortgage has been taken off.

Most land is registered now, and there aren't any bundles of deeds for registered land.

Ok, as long as I know we will get copies of the deeds eventually, then I’ll just wait. Thank you for your replies.

There are no deeds for you to be given copies of. Once land is registered the bundle of paper deeds is legally redundant and gets binned.

Ah right - ok then… so it’s all electronic now, that states my husband and I own our house outright? I just assumed we would get paper deeds because the letter states about paper deeds being returned to whoever sent them to the LR in the first place.
Thank you for all of your replies.

They just mean "we definitely don't have your paper deeds so please don't ask us for them!" Whoever the Land Registry sent them back to after registration might have kept them out of sentimentality, but they don't have any legal value anymore. Your names on the register, and the removal of the bank's charge from the register, mean that it is all yours.

I would sign up to the alerts they mention so you’re made aware of anyone trying to defraud you.

You need do nothing, just open the champagne and bask in the feeling.

Put the mortgage money into a savings account.

@lookleft ah, right - now I understand! Thank you for the clarification. You’ve explained it better than the letter.
@Remembertotakeabreak yes - I will be doing this - I didn’t even know this was a thing, that other people outside your home could do this!! 😳
@TheNoonBell thank you 😊 unfortunately it’s not a nice reason as to why my husband and I got the lump sum of money, but it certainly lifts a weight off our shoulders.
@mumda this is what we plan on doing - we will be saving what we can as there will come a time when I will have to give up work temporarily (or possibly permanently) so at least we won’t have to worry about struggling to make ends meet whilst I’m not working.

Thank you for your replies everyone, I really appreciate it 💐

I used to work as a legal secretary in a firm that did conveyancing. This would be 20 odd years ago (although it was NI so I'm not sure it is all electronic yet). Paper deeds were very much a thing then, and we had a huge safe room in the basement where they were all stored as well as wills. They were very cool. Piles of folded up huge vellum or parchment documents, hand calligraphed with wax seals and all tied up with pink legal ribbon. I used to love them!

Hi OP, as other posters have said Land Registry is all electronic. You will not get paper deeds sent to you. We received a letter from our Building Society confirming our mortgage balance outstanding was £0.

This is a really important point.

There have been cases where a fraudster pretends to own a property and "sells" it to an innocent third party. Once that third party is registered as the legal owner, the rightful owner will not be able to get their property back. They will need to track down the fraudster to try to claim damages from them.

It is significantly harder to do this fraud on a property that is mortgaged as the mortgage will need to be repaid before ownership can be changed at the Land Registry. It's an extra barrier to the fraud.

Mortgage-free owners (especially of properties that might be empty for any period of time) need to protect themselves by signing up to the alerts system.