Missing house deeds - problem?

[zico]

My late father's house deeds have disappeared from the filing cabinet where he held them. Someone must have taken them.

Could this be a problem in selling the house? I believe it's just £50 or so to get replacement deeds, but could the person who has taken the deeds do anything to frustrate/hinder the sale? My father added an extension shortly after purchasing the house, and also has a £1 per annum rental agreement for access to land behind a substation, to allow access between garage and house.

[monabri]

Have the deeds been sent to be logged at Land Registry?

https://www.land-search-online.co.uk/

[Dod101]

Did he have a regular lawyer? Will they hold them? Otherwise, his house may be registered with the Land Registry and that should over ride the deeds anyway.

Dod

[Clitheroekid]

My late father's house deeds have disappeared from the filing cabinet where he held them. Someone must have taken them.

Could this be a problem in selling the house? I believe it's just £50 or so to get replacement deeds, but could the person who has taken the deeds do anything to frustrate/hinder the sale? My father added an extension shortly after purchasing the house, and also has a £1 per annum rental agreement for access to land behind a substation, to allow access between garage and house.

Whether it'll be a problem depends on whether or not the title to the house is registered at the Land Registry - you can find out easily via the LR website - https://www.gov.uk/search-property-info ... d-registry

If it is registered, then generally speaking the paper deeds are of historical interest only, and they aren't needed to sell the house.

If it's not registered then yes, you do have a problem. You'll probably have to make an application to register the title at LR, but you'll almost certainly need professional assistance. LR have published guidance here - https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... -destroyed

Even if it's registered the rental agreement probably won't have made it on to the register, and although its absence probably wouldn't be a deal breaker it'd certainly be useful to be able to produce a copy to any prospective buyer. However, the lucky recipient of the annual £1 should have a counterpart of the agreement, so they will probably let you have a copy.

[zico]

Thanks, I've checked online and it says both Title Register and Title Plan is available online. My dad's file did still contain documentation about the setup and payment of the £1 p.a. rental fee.

[DrFfybes]

My father added an extension shortly after purchasing the house, and also has a £1 per annum rental agreement for access to land behind a substation, to allow access between garage and house.

This could be an issue, but if it was recent then it should be recorded at the LR.

One thing that came from our move is that a lot of the permissions were only on the old paper copies, easements for services, or where owners have claimed right of access over unregistered land or been granted it by the owners. The neighbours were in a similar position.

If they go missing then there can be problems.

Paul

[zico]

I've now downloaded the title deeds and title plan from the Land Registry website.
The only thing (and possibly quite a big thing) is that my father owned the land for his garage which is separated from the house by a sub-station, and the title plan shows this area, but only has a red line around the main area of the house and gardens.
Should the next step be for me to contact my father's solicitors to see what documents they hold?

As a bit of a side-issue, I was slightly stunned to see the following in the guidance about boundaries!

If you live in England or Wales, there’s usually no record of:

the exact boundary between two properties
who owns the hedge, wall, tree or fence between 2 properties

Isn't the above stuff essential information, especially with land being so expensive?

[DrFfybes]

Boundary ambiguity is not uncommon, our last place had several maps differing by a couple of feet. The original plan refers to distance on the ground, and as the plot dropped 30m front to back this made quite a difference if you measured it horizontally! Boundary responsibility might be mentioned in the deeds.

The garage plot could be on a seperate entry - have you tried map searching on the Land Regisrty site to see if it is.

Paul

[Arborbridge]

Boundaries on those LR maps always look flaky: they just aren't detailed enough.
If there's a dispute, a surveyor usually looks for historic "witnesses" on the ground. With many houses this would be the line defined by some original artefact - which is why I've left some ancient concrete posts sawn through near ground level as evidence rather than uprooting them relying on a replacement fence or hedge.

Arb.

[zico]

Boundary ambiguity is not uncommon, our last place had several maps differing by a couple of feet. The original plan refers to distance on the ground, and as the plot dropped 30m front to back this made quite a difference if you measured it horizontally! Boundary responsibility might be mentioned in the deeds.

The garage plot could be on a seperate entry - have you tried map searching on the Land Regisrty site to see if it is.

Paul

I tried map searching, but there isn't a separate entity for the garage plot. Looks like I'll need to see what document my father's solicitor has.

[chas49]

I tried map searching, but there isn't a separate entity for the garage plot. Looks like I'll need to see what document my father's solicitor has.

Presumably your father's solicitor did the registration. I *think* it's usual for the old deeds to be returned by the LR after registration, so is it possible they are held by the solicitors?

[DrFfybes]

I tried map searching, but there isn't a separate entity for the garage plot. Looks like I'll need to see what document my father's solicitor has.

Have you looked at the entry that contains the garage plot - might be a starting point if the owner is listed.

[monabri]

Who supplied the details of the property to Land Registry.....?

I inherited a house when my mum died. I completed the transfer of ownership form to transfer the house into my name. I recall listing and supplying about 36 documents to Land Registry ( this included info on a conservatory extension) and after the docs were registered, they were returned....I doubt your dad would have dumped the paperwork. So, if a solicitor submitted the docs to LR on your dad's behalf this might be worth investigating. Who could have taken documents from your dad's filing cabinet and why? I'd suggest it might have been your dad!

[didds]

I'
Should the next step be for me to contact my father's solicitors to see what documents they hold?

IF they hold anything. a couple of decades ish after we moved here, we had a query made aboiut an aspect of our proiperty that wasnt covered in the deeds. So I contacted the solicitors that handled the copvneyancing, but they told me they routinely disposed of any records over 7 years old so they had nothing to proffer.

[mc2fool]

I'
Should the next step be for me to contact my father's solicitors to see what documents they hold?

IF they hold anything. a couple of decades ish after we moved here, we had a query made aboiut an aspect of our proiperty that wasnt covered in the deeds. So I contacted the solicitors that handled the copvneyancing, but they told me they routinely disposed of any records over 7 years old so they had nothing to proffer.

When we wanted the lease for my mum's house we contacted her solicitors and were told (by some junior assistant, as we found out later) that they no longer had it but after some scrambling around and failing to get it by other means we called the solicitors back and this time the solicitor himself answered and said, of course they had it, and indeed they did. And that was from a lot longer than just a couple of decades ago.

So, while results will be idiosyncratic to the solicitors, yes Zico, you should definitely contact your father's solicitors, and make sure you talk to someone authoritative there, if possible the actual solicitor him/herself that dealt with your father.