Reply to: Find title deeds, boundaries for a property?

[d000hg]

I need to find who the solicitor is first!

I should be down there in a few weeks so spending serious time/money on a solution isn't worth it but it's still not ideal when a potential buyer wants to see it before making an offer (I have no idea unless they've been stung like BBP in the past)

[RSoles]

A potential buyer for my late parents' house is asking to see the land boundaries. While they probably had the deeds somewhere they'll be in a filing cabinet somewhere (possible beware of the leopard sign) 500 miles away in deepest Cornwall!

.

How's about old-fashioned paper/vellum(?) deeds in the strongroom of your late parents' solicitors.
That's where mine were/are.

[d000hg]

If land isn't registered, what is (or was) to prevent you simply registering it in your own name without having to buy it from anyone?

It appears you can but someone may come forward later with a deed proving you wrong. In such cases it appears indemnity insurance is quite common.

[northernladyuk]

From that post:



If land isn't registered, what is (or was) to prevent you simply registering it in your own name without having to buy it from anyone?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft#United_Kingdom

[OwlHoot]

Oh boy, do I know all about this....

From that post:

I'm buying some additional land as part of the transaction. Turns out that the piece of land doesn't appear to be registered to the vendor ( or anyone else) so I can't buy it and have it registered in my name until that's cleared up. ...

If land isn't registered, what is (or was) to prevent you simply registering it in your own name without having to buy it from anyone?

[northernladyuk]

Yes

Liar. You've never passed a Greggs in your life.

Pick us up a cheese and onion pasty, will you love?

[xoggoth]

Did they need a mortgage to buy the property? If so, it would be usual for the mortgagees to retain and store the documents.

[NickFitz]

Do you pass a Greggs?

Yes

[northernladyuk]

The Land Registry is a few minutes walk up the road from me - would you like me to pop in and ask them on my way to town?

Do you pass a Greggs?

[NigelJK]

I believe that is what was called a 'postcode search'. I only know this as the solicitors who I used for my house purchase sent the search to the wrong local authority first time around ...

Something like this?

[d000hg]

I remember that story BBP... ugh!

The thing is this should be straightforward. It was bought mid-90s (IIRC) by my parents. It's a Victorian farmhouse with a well-defined boundary which hasn't changed (they wanted to buy the adjoining field but the farmer wouldn't sell)... so not the nightmare you were faced with

So 20-odd years ago the solicitor must've found the relevant documents. But it appears to just pre-date online registry. However my query is what the solicitor would do - where would they source the documents? And when it was last sold, before everything went internet, how did the solicitors find documents in "the old days"?

There must be records somewhere of which solicitors were involved, even if they're in a book somewhere.

[quackhandle]

There were a number of changes around ownership of land with the Land Registration Act 2002.

Be careful you don't lose any land with the adverse possession rule. I had an issue with this were someone was selling land right in line with my house. Solicitor told me to check my deeds (had them going back nearly 200 years) and look for boundaries in yardage.

qh

[Big Blue Plymouth]

A potential buyer for my late parents' house is asking to see the land boundaries. While they probably had the deeds somewhere they'll be in a filing cabinet somewhere (possible beware of the leopard sign) 500 miles away in deepest Cornwall!

I looked on https://www.gov.uk/search-property-i...-land-registry and the property is listed as "no information" which seems slightly odd as I believe the sale to my folks was mid-late 90's.
I see there's a map search but I have to pay upfront with no idea what it'll return or how soon.

Is there no online way to find the history of a house, like an ancestry tool for property? See when it changed hands, when it was built, etc, etc? It seems like it would be a neat thing to play with!
That aside... how do the solicitors do it? If someone has lived in a house for 40 years as is not uncommon, and lost all their paperwork, etc.

Oh boy, do I know all about this....

I lost the house I was going to purchase for this very reason. After I'd moved in (it's a long story).

Half the house was showing as unadopted on the Land Registry and they couldn't find their deeds.

The only way to sort it was to just find the solicitors who dealt with the conveyancing 50 odd years ago. Trouble is, they bought chunks of land piecemeal from the church over a period of time and it appearedit was never documented.

In short, mortgage co wouldn't release the funds until the LR was sorted.

[NickFitz]

The Land Registry is a few minutes walk up the road from me - would you like me to pop in and ask them on my way to town?

[d000hg]

There's still a fair bit of unregistered land and property out there but I'm fairly certain almost all property has been subject to compulsory registration on sale since the early 90s. Have you searched on the Land Registry website? It costs £3 to download the documents.

Yeah - I put in the postcode and lists all the properties including the one in question... but ours says "no information available". The only option they present is "search the index map" but that looks slow and uncertain!