Owning your own home

Two homes later!

https://www.checkatrade.com/trades/FirstChoiceBuildingAndHomeImprovements/

I think I remember saying to you but I had to be really specific with them about what I wanted and when it wasn't done correctly asked them to re-do it. The quality of the work was decent - in total it cost £3500

Great. I simply need them to redo the paving and the path.

We received the service charge documents for the second half of the year a couple of days ago - no attempt to include the fines they tried to levy, and we've not heard a peep out of the firm of solicitors they were using to try to inflict the fines since I told them that we had no case to answer.

I'm hoping that this is the end of it, but I trust our managing agent around as far as I can throw him.

We received the service charge documents for the second half of the year a couple of days ago - no attempt to include the fines they tried to levy, and we've not heard a peep out of the firm of solicitors they were using to try to inflict the fines since I told them that we had no case to answer.

I'm hoping that this is the end of it, but I trust our managing agent around as far as I can throw him.

That's brilliant news. If they don't invoice you, they can't charge you. You're right to stay suspicious and on guard but this seems like the first step in a victory for common sense.

My old managing agent, by way of contrast, spent the week slagging off our MP to her face because she had the temerity to ask about the health of one of our 71 year old residents after the mangign agent had failed to deal with one of her problems for months at a time. It beggars belief how these people remain in business.

Yes, I fired off an email on Tuesday about this. Section 2o monies transferred (to the solicitor) 13/03 - statement of account yet to be updated...

...fun times.

I found that emailing the solicitor was useless- never any reply. Calling them kind of worked, but always ended up being unsatisfactory as they wanted half the money for a reason that they could never articulate.

The AGM is going to be fun....!

A forum for current projects that aren't bikes https://www.lfgss.com/microcosms/1505/

The AGM is going to be fun....!

I'm not sure I can bring myself to attend.

Title deeds; leave them with all of my possessions in a storage locker, or take them to Ireland with me?

You don't need the title deeds anymore it's all stored electronically (assuming it's registered land etc and wasn't last sold 90 odd years ago )

Still not something you'll leave laying around.

+Colm89 bring it with you.

Worked in both pawn broking (yep...) and banking, someone could use them to put you in some real hassle if they get their hands on them, electronic system or not.

Noted! Thanks!

I have literally no original ownership documents whatever to go with my 120 year old house. I have no idea where the deeds are or any of the original documents.

Everything is stored electronically now and I certainly won't lose any sleep over it..

Ignorance is bliss, good for you, you can now sleep well.

We've got the original deeds to ours, from the 1890s. The house was sold off-plan when Plashet Park was fields.

They put a bit more effort into documents back then.

That is so not necessarily true.

Everything is stored electronically now

It's not. I do this for a living. IAAL. Your advice is wrong.

Whatever you do, look after them. You may need them some day.

Our title deeds are stored with our solicitor for safe keeping.

I'm not saying he can put them in the bin (why would he do that?) but if it's registered land (as I
specifically said above) then the land registry will hold the required documents for him to prove his title.

Obviously if it's unregistered land and you need to prove the title then you'll need the documents (as I also inferred above).

And you've selectively misquoted me too (please don't do that) when I was referring to my own house (being registered land) in terms of 'everything being electronically stored' and that I am therefore 'not worried' about having any documents at all. As I said above if the property is registered with the land registry then it is registered with the land registry and that at the end of the day is all you need to really be worried about.

This reminds me to enquire what happened to ours; hopefully the solicitor is keeping them...

Well, I'm not going to argue the point as you seem to have your mind made up, but for the benefit of everyone else, here's a few reasons why it's worth hanging onto old title deeds and not relying on Land Registry records.

1. Land Registry document retention is patchy at best, particularly historically. In theory they should have a copy of every conveyance, transfer or deed noted against the title, or a reference to the title which the document in question is filed under. In practice, they don't. It's very common to ask the Land Registry for a copy of a document referred to on a registered title and find they don't have a copy.

2. The problem is particularly significant in older registered titles where the Land Registry used to produce a Land Certificate proving title with the historical title deeds bound up in it. It's pretty rare that the Land Registry still has copies of those documents.

3. Even if they do have a copy, there's no guarantee it will be legible. This is particularly true of the period when they were using mechanised microfiche copying systems. There are a lot of documents held by the Land Registry which are now held digitally but are copies of older microfiche documents where either individual pages or the whole document is illegible. The problem is particularly significant where the documents are hand-written.

4. Being registered as the proprietor of a property at the Land Registry proves you have title to that area of land. However, almost all boundaries shown on Land Registry plans are general boundaries as a result of rule 60 of the Land Registration Rules 2003. As a result, you can't rely on Land Registry titles and plans to show where the boundaries of your property are. In order to establish where the legal boundary is, you have to go back to the original conveyance or transfer which created that boundary. Which is a problem if you've lost it.

5. Being registered as the proprietor of a property at the Land Registry proves you have title to that area of land. However, it's sometimes useful to know how owned the land previously, and that is information which is not always available from the Land Registry. Restrictive covenants and easements can be extinguished if the two areas of land have at some point been in common ownership - the technical term is unity of seisin. If you have the historical title deeds you can trace back ownership to see if this has occurred. If you don't, and you have to rely on Land Registry records, you may well not be able to. Prior to 1993 historical title information from the Land Registry is pretty much non-existent.

6. The burden of restrictive covenants is registered againt registered titles. The benefit is not (except sometimes in building schemes). So you know that an area of land is subject to restrictive covenants, but the registered title won't tell you who has the benefit. In the note of the restrictive covenant against the registered title there will sometimes be a note of what the restrictive covenants are - not always, sometimes it'll just say 'A conveyance of [date] contains restrictive covenants' and nothing more. If there's a record of what the restrictive covenant is, then it might state that the covenant is for the benefit of the 'Vendor's Retained Land'. That term - the Retained Land - may well be defined elsewhere in the conveyance or transfer. But the Land Registry won't include that bit in the recital in the Charges Register. And for the reasons set out above they may well not have a copy of the relevant conveyance/transfer. So if you haven't kept it, too bad.

7. Historical conveyances will often have a covenant for the production of conveyances where part of an area of land is being transferred. This means the purchaser can see documents which relate to their land. Those documents won't necessarily be produced on first registration, because the landowner will have the right to see the documents but won't have the documents themselves. If you've got the conveyance including the covenant for production, it can be very helpful in tracking down who holds the relevant documents. If you don't, you're stuffed. The documents you need may still be out there, but you have no way of tracking them down.

8. The Property Register of a registered title will often includes notes of easements, such as rights of way or drainage rights. It'll say something like 'The property registered under this title has the benefit of a right of way over the land shown edged blue in a conveyance of [date]'. If you're lucky, that colouring will be replicated on the LR plan. Quite often it's not. So if LR hasn't kept a copy of that conveyance - and as noted above, you'd be a fool to rely upon them having a copy - then good luck proving where that right of way goes. Or that you have a right to use the water pipes going under your neighbour's garden.

As with most things, there's a good chance you won't ever need historical title deeds. However, if a dispute starts about boundaries, restrictive covenant, easements and other interests in land then they can be invaluable. For that reason I'd always recommend keeping them secure, either at a bank, a firm of solicitors or a dedicated secure document storage company. It's probably not a bad idea to keep digital copies as well, but having the original wet ink signature hard copy is always best.

Oh, and the Curse of the Missing Page, how could I forget that? You identify the document central to your client's case, the Land Registry manage to find their copy, they send it to you, and Sod's Law being what it is, the key page you need and which will solve the case is missing. And the Land Registry's response is invariably 'you've got what we've got'.

If anyone is still tempted to rely upon the Land Registry's document retention, do bear in mind that there is a standard form template letter the Land Registry use to tell you that they don't have a copy of a document that's listed against a registered title. I don't have one in front of me now, but it starts off something like 'Although the document is noted against the title, we are unable to locate a copy'. The tl;dr version would be 'Should have it, don't have it, soz.'