Deeds To House

[porkchop]

When a person holds to the deeds of a house showing that the property is in his own name and wants to sell the house would he not first have to prove that he is in fact the person named in the deed.
Also, in the case if the original deed was lost, the information of the deeds and ownership would be held in Regristry of Deeds office and all that was required would be the same proof of ownership in the case if the propoerty was to be sold?

[ToraToraTora]

Deeds are mostly irrelevant these days. It's the land registry that counts.

[Old_Geezer]

Trouble is my family home hasn't been sold for ages so go look up info and no one seems to know anything. Does the registry have more info than is public knowledge ?

[Hymie]

Since they would almost certainly be using a solicitor in the sale of the property, the solicitor would have to ensure that they were dealing with the true property owner.

There have been cases where the Land Registry has failed in their due diligence, and allowed fraudulent transfer of property ownership.

[barry1010]

OG, if the house hasn't been sold for decades it may never have been registered and the Land Registry will have no information. The current owner can register it.

It is usual to provide ID when you sell a property

[barry1010]

For OG https://www.gov.uk/registering-land-or-property-with-land-registry/register-for-the-first-time

[Old_Geezer]

Ah. So the deeds do become useful. Not wishing to derail porkchop's thread but... I have the unusal problem that when my parents died some of the estate (banks, building societies, etc) was sorted by me, the rest by the solicitor. Many years later one realised no transfer had been made. I thought the solicitor had handled it as I was only doing the easy stuff to reduce costs. Turns out he'd passed that job on to me. So it's in my parents' name still :-(

[wolf63]

I have recently bought and sold property. Both times I had to prove my identity to the solicitor.