Reply With QuoteI keep mine in my safe but you can store them with solicitors for a small fee
...apart from the obvious answer...
Have recently paid off the mortgage and now received the title deeds to the property. So, was wondering where to securely store them. A bit of Googling and in typical internet fashion opinion is divided whether they will ever be needed as quote "the Land Registry holds electronic copies."
It seems there are several document storage firms that will look after them. Does anyone know how much they charge?
OTOH if they're now only of historical interest I may as well stick them at the back of the wardrobe.
Any thoughts and/or advice will be appreciated.
EDIT: I don't have room for a fire-proof safe.
I keep mine in my safe but you can store them with solicitors for a small fee
Have you considered asking your bank to sit on them ?
If your house/land is registered with the Land Registry, I believe that you can put them in the bin (or keep them for historical interest - but there's no need for secure storage).
This is my understanding too.Originally Posted by PhilipK
As above.
If your deeds have boundary extents shown - it might be an idea to scan and keep a copy in Dropbox, or similar.
Got ours in a big box file on top of the wardrobe. Are they precious?
As others have said, these are no longer of any value due to Land Registry controlling everything. Of a personal interest to the householder in a 'who do you think you are' kind of way.
I used to have £1 outstanding on my mortgage so that Nationwide would safely store them, but when the law changed they ended the practice and just put ours in the post to us. They even wrote off the £1 and closed the account, which was fairly decent of them.
To those still paying solicitors - stop.
Last edited by Wallasey Runner; 4th November 2019 at 15:51.
Under floor safe ?
dunk
"Well they would say that ... wouldn't they!"
Mine are in a box in a cupboard. Actually the last house I bought I didnt even bother collecting the deeds up from my solicitor.
As a slight aside, the deeds I have from a house that is almost 200 years old are quite interesting (well to me at least).
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Where do you keep your wills? Probably useful to keep them in the same place. Mine are held at the solicitors which they do free of charge.
With this in mind, I've recently begun to compile a list of "what's where" so that in the event of my demise (which, I hasten to add, I hope is a few years off) my family know who to contact to close accounts, etc. Just a small thing but it might ease someone's burden.
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Mine are in my safe along with our wills.
Thanks for all the interesting replies. Can't keep them with my will 'cos I don't have one! (Maybe I should but I'm thankfully single and it'll all go to the kids). House was built in '95 so maybe only an inch thick wad. Think I'll just bung them at the back of the wardrobe as planned.
Even if you want all your estate to pass to your children it will, I believe, be less expensive and much more straightforward for your beneficiaries if you make a will.
I wouldn’t trust anything in the care of a solicitors.
Too much either of monetary value, sentimental or simply inconvenient - go missing either by theft or negligence.
This is true for some. If there are no documents referred to in the title then that is fine
If other documents ie leases, deeds of easements etc are referred to then if the title says ‘copy filed’ then the Land Registry will have copies of those as well
However:-
1. Sometimes LR don’t have scans and on the odd occasion (happened to me) they say they have when push came to shove they didn’t !
2. Often a deeds package will contain other useful docs ie 30 year damp proof guarantees or planning permissions etc
I would keep them but not be too precious about paying for safe storage.
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What an odd thing to say?
Care to elaborate?
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
I just asked my wife where ours are, she said “original? Not a clue” she then said “All online these days so pretty much redundant” and she works in a solicitors so if we needed them stored it would be free, I’d check first then make a decision.
Yup mine were registered about Eight years ago, I have never seen them. As said stored on land registry so no need to store and pay someone else.
[QUOTE=Geralt;5240135]Thanks for all the interesting replies. Can't keep them with my will 'cos I don't have one! (Maybe I should but I'm thankfully single and it'll all go to the kids).
check online with land registry? & bin the deeds, but MAKE A WILL is one of the best single pieces of advice I can give based on 63 years experience seriously !
I can't speak for blackal, but our former solicitors 'lost' Lynn's will. Most inconvenient at the time, potentially a big risk and absolutely no offer of correcting the matter, (either a free rewrite or compensation)!
I'd be careful what you keep with any external body and always keep an authenticated and signed copy elsewhere. Oh, and tell your executor(s) where they are, particularly in the case of wills.
Best Regards - Peter
I'd hate to be with you when you're on your own.
Had a similar thing happen but it was both our wills. We wanted to change them and when it came to it they couldn’t find the original ones! Had to reschedule and bring our own copies.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
I would certainly keep all 'valuables' as such in a metal box/safe on the ground floor, the last part of the house to go if there is ever a fire ...
Providing ownership is registered with the land registry then the deeds have no legal relevance although they may be historically interesting for the owner of the house. We've just been through a house purchase which wasn't registered at the land registry, and the deeds were lost - not much fun!
Having jumped through hoops recently with wills and house deeds and the possibility of neither being extant I would give the following advice.
1) Make a will. Make sure your executor / beneficiarie(s) know where it is. We eventually tracked the will in question to a solicitor, they had been through a number of buyouts and name changes but still managed to find and deliver it within a 2 days.
2) House deeds. While modern house deeds are stored electronically, we were facing the prospect of selling a house built in 1968, bought by my parents that year and never sold. Eventually we discovered the deeds were held by a bank in my fathers name. It was only luck that we found a letter in my mothers effects from the mid 90's that had the document storage number on it. Selling a house without deeds is possible but it a massive undertaking requiring a lot of supporting evidence and even then you effectively have squatters rights and have to buy indemnity insurance. So again, that paper copy might not be worth much in most cases but it can be very important to know where it is for your executor.
Personally I have all our important paperwork in a filing cabinet - I will probably move to a safe at some point in the near future once post move syndrome has finished. The other alternative is to store it in a banks secure storage or with a solicitor but in these cases make bloody sure those who will have to deal with your estate know the location and any access / filing numbers necessary.
When I paid my mortgage off the building society said they didn't hold any physical deeds of mine just electronic ones. All they did was inform land registry there was no longer a charge over them and sent me the confirmation for this.
When I ordered the deeds from LR (in electronic format) I realised I'd had the paper copies all the time along with the all the other paperwork from when I bought the house.
Sounds like a nightmare. Out of curiosity, how do they determine (1) ownership and (2) boundaries in such a circumstances.
It's probably also worthwhile scanning any important documents (a process I have recently started). It's easy to store electronic copies in multiple places (for security) and to have in a single known place (for easy of retrieval).
I've got all my old guff and it is interesting to look through it from an historical POV. Some great covenants - no livestock or advertising hoardings.
All redundant now of course but I'm still keeping it.
Cheers,
Neil.
[QUOTE=PhilipK;5240651]Sounds like a nightmare. Out of curiosity, how do they determine (1) ownership and (2) boundaries in such a circumstances.
It was a nightmare. The owner had to go through a "first registration" process where evidence is required to effectively substantiate ownership through evidence and sworn statements. In some cases the title attributed may be weaker (i.e possessory rather than absolute). Our situation was complex - a long story of solicitor ineptitude - but fortunately had a happy ending.
Same here, although I have stored them in a fire proof document holder. I’m not sure how it would hold up if there was a full on fire but I guess it’s better than nothing.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07H9XRN...xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==
When my dad died I got his solicitor to look for his will, he turned his office upside down looking for it, then I remembered he’d changed solicitors...
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