Title deeds are useful for a number of reasons, including for finding the owner of a house in the UK.
But are they needed to sell a house?
Read on to find out.
What are title deeds?
They’re paper documents that show the chain of ownership of property or land.
Sometimes they include details of:
- Boundaries
- Mortgages
- The length of any leases
- Covenants on property.
Every time a home is bought and sold, they are changed to reflect new ownership.
The Land Registry scans the original documents on registration and sends them back to you or your conveyancer.
(The conveyancer is the legal professional dealing with your housing transaction.)
Your conveyancer will either send the original document or copies to your mortgage provider. The latter will return them to you when you pay the mortgage off or directly to you.
Do you need the original document?
No, and there’s no obligation on the person who has it to pass it on when they sell their property.
The home only needs to be registered with the Land Registry.
As part of the conveyancing process your solicitor will contact the Land Registry for a copy of the deeds and to start the process of updating them.
Scotland
In Scotland they will get in touch with the Registers of Scotland for a land certificate, which holds similar information to a title deed.
Your home isn’t registered, what next?
Registration became compulsory in England and Wales in 1990. Since then, most title deeds are recorded by the Land Registry.
However around 14% of freehold properties are still not registered, often because they have been under the same ownership for a long time.
If you are selling a home that isn’t registered and you can’t find the original title deeds, it’s still possible to track them down. (Perhaps you have inherited property from an elderly relative, for example.)
If there is – or was – a mortgage on the property, the provider may still have them or a copy.
Likewise, if you know which solicitor or conveyancer dealt with the previous purchase, they may have them.
If title deeds are lost
Occasionally finding title deeds is impossible.
They may have been lost or destroyed in a fire, or perhaps the chain of ownership is now too long and complex.
But all is not lost.
Statement of truth (ST3) form
Although it will prolong the conveyancing process, you can complete a first registration of the property by proving your ownership with a statement of truth.
This will involve filling out an ST3 form and providing evidence. Before starting down this road it’s worth hiring a conveyancing expert with experience in this area – since it’s quite rare many conveyancers may not have faced the problem before.
The statement of truth will involve building a case so that the Land Registry accepts you are the owner of the property. To support your case you can do several things:
- Identify the property you want to register, ideally on a plan drawn up when it was built.
- Detail where the deeds were when they were lost or how they came to be destroyed.
- Show who owned the property when they were lost.
- Explain why the deeds were held where they were – by a mortgage provider for example.
- Prove there was a mortgage on the property when they were lost.
- Show what you have done to try and find them.
If they were lost while in the possession of a mortgage provider or solicitors, they should help you establish ownership.
In all cases though, evidence such as records of mortgage payments, bank statements, utility bills, etc. will be useful.
Selling your home once they’re found
The good news is, if you are the genuine owner there’s likely to be enough evidence to prove it to the Land Registry.
Although it will cost extra in conveyancing fees, how much depends on the complexity of your situation.
Often inherited properties take a little more investigation during the conveyancing process because you aren’t as familiar with the documentation and history of the home. We understand this and are experienced in dealing with challenging home selling situations.
If you’ve inherited a home and want to sell it quickly, either to cover the costs of an estate or simply so it’s not weighing on your mind at a difficult time, we’d be happy to help.
We buy houses of all shapes and sizes and specialise in doing it with the minimum of fuss or hassle for you. Working with us you also won’t pay estate agent’s fees or have to arrange or pay for solicitors.
