House Deeds

[Ric.ror]

I have just finished paying my mortgage off and have been told I need to get my house deeds from the Land Registry. I now want to sell my house so which option should I chose? I particularly need to know if it is Freehold or Leasehold (which I suspect it is)

[woofgang]

you don’t need to get them unless you need them....its worth having a look at them to make sure that the mortgage people have taken off their notice of interest and that the details are correct but that’s all.

[Buenchico]

Land Registry records are in the public domain. Anyone can see who owns your house and who has a charge registered against the property (such as a mortgage lender) simply by paying £3 for a copy of the title register here:
https://www.gov.uk/search-property-information-land-registry
(The title register should indicate whether the property is freehold or leasehold).

As Woofgang says, it's definitely worth checking whether the mortgage company have lifted their charge against the property. (If they haven't you won't be able to sell it). When I paid my mortgage off the building society managed to lose my final payment (of around £35k) and then tried to repossess my house because I'd not been making monthly repayments! I eventually thought that I'd got it all sorted out but then, over a decade later, when I tried to sell part of my garden to a neighbour I found that I couldn't because the building society had forgotten to remove the charge against the property from the title register!

[woofgang]

That happened to us too Chris. Not the bit about their losing the money, but about a year after we paid off, we checked our house details because we wanted to see where our boundaries were and found that there was still a charge on the property...happily there was a letter confirming the final payment although at first the “nice” lady I spoke to denied all knowledge.

[murraymints]

your original deeds will be held by your mortgage provider..they should be returned to you or your solicitor and a discharge of standard security issued and recorded with Land registry

[woofgang]

murraymints, these days original deeds most often have no significance at all. Ours were sent to us around 10 years before we paid off the mortgage with a note from the bank to say that they had no legal significance and they thought we might like to have them for interest.