Where are the deeds of my house ?

[LMC]

Hi all, I'm about to move house. My solicitor who dealt with the purchase of this original house seems to have gone or died or whatever. His firm is no longer where it was. I've searched Google for him but it only ever brings up his old business address.

If a solicitor dies, goes bust, retires etc, where do all the deeds and stuff go ?

This is a Scottish solicitor btw, if that makes any difference.

I welcome any help :-)

[Wings]

If you have a mortgage, then with the mortgage company. If not then contact the local area office of the Law Society, to see who took over the old solicitor's practice, and then if no luck the Land Registry.

[LMC]

Thanks for that m8 :-)

[Steve_D]

Not sure if it applies in Scotland but in England I think the deeds, as in parchment like documents with moth holes, no longer apply. The whole thing is now just a computer record at the land registry. When I bought my last property the solicitor gave me all the old papers as a keepsake. I duly passed them on in the same vane when I sold.

Steve

[chris1roll]

All ours going back to the 17th century are in the gun cabinet, have been in our posession since we moved in in 1983 - when did they start computerising everything?

[fido]

Steve_D said:

Not sure if it applies in Scotland but in England I think the deeds, as in parchment like documents with moth holes, no longer apply. The whole thing is now just a computer record at the land registry. When I bought my last property the solicitor gave me all the old papers as a keepsake. I duly passed them on in the same vane when I sold.

Steve

What he said.

[Simpo Two]

My mortgage co sent me the deeds unexpectedly a few years ago - seems they didn't have the room to keep them, or it was too much responsibility.

I guess it's like a building society passbook. If you have £10K in your account and drop the passbook down a drain, you haven't actually lost £10K.

[onomatopoeia]

Steve_D said:

Not sure if it applies in Scotland but in England I think the deeds, as in parchment like documents with moth holes, no longer apply. The whole thing is now just a computer record at the land registry. When I bought my last property the solicitor gave me all the old papers as a keepsake. I duly passed them on in the same vane when I sold.

When I remortgaged the new building society sent me my deeds for ownership of the land going back to 1935 or so. The house itself was built in 1970. The most recent bit of paper still showed the old lender as having a charge so presumably there is a more recent version that I do not have.

It was not clear how important all the old bits of papaer are so I stuffed them in a filing cabinet.