House Deeds

Ger Roe

I am looking for some advice on how to view my house deeds.
I have a mortgage on the house so the building society holds the deeds.

Our estate is caught up in a legal dispute between a sewage service provider (estate is on a 'temporary' scheme set up by the original estate developer over 25 years ago) and the local council. The council is taking legal action against current operators of the plant (original company is long gone - latest company is now in liquidation) for pollution offences. As residents we would like to see the council take over the service completely and connect the estate to a mains scheme.

A council engineer has cryptically suggested that residents need to see what conditions were attached when we bought our houses - he has not given specific details on what we should be looking for.

I have asked my building society about obtaining a copy of the deeds for my house, but it seems that this is not a simple process and will require the appointment of solicitors.

At this stage I don't see why I can't be given a copy of my deeds - I have been told that there may be some document copies on file at the land registry or even with the local council.

Basically, I am trying to find out what the long term plan was and if the council were ever going to take responsibility for sewage treatment on the estate. The council took the estate in charge about ten years ago, but they specifically excluded operation of the treatment plant.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? I need to find out if operation of the sewage treatment plant was mentioned as an aspect of the deeds.

Do I have to go legal with the building society, or are there registry or council options to obtain documentation?


Regards,

littlemac1980

I presume the Building Society are under the impression that you want to take temporary possession of the deeds. You will need a solicitor to do that.

You could point out to them that you don't want to take up the original deeds, but instead offer to pay them for the cost of providing you with a copy of them. I don't know how successful that approach might be though.

Ger Roe

The society knows I only want a copy. I explained that I am not entirely sure what the council engineer was hinting at and so I want to look through the document for reference.

Do you know why it should be so difficult to see a document that I personally have such a major attachment to? I don't understand the restricted access policy. I'm not trying to see the third secret of Fatima.

I can understand the society holding the original for loan security, but I didn't think it would be such a big deal to get hold of a few pages with 'COPY' stamped on them.

nuac

they will not hand out original deeds and supporting documentation to anybody other than a solicitor who signs an accountable receipt for them. That means that if for any reason they don't come back, the solicitor who signed the receipt would be responsible

they probably have many thousands of deeds. It would not be practicable to go thru your file and copy out what it relevant to this problem,

imho, you are going to need a solicitor anyhow to advise on this, so you may as well appoint one now.

Ger Roe

It seems clear now that I will need a solicitor, but I still don't understand why.

I am not looking to hold the deeds, I am merely looking for the society to forward me a copy. It is a document that I have tied all my resources into (through buying and maintaining my house) and I don't see why I can't simply be provided with a copy for reference. All that is required is a photocopier and some common sense. I am quite willing to pay a reasonable administration fee for the privliege.

In my particular case my train of thought was to get a copy of the document, take a look through it, and then engage a solicitor if I thought there was any merit in doing so.

It seems a bit daft that you get a brief glimpse of a document on the day that you sign up for it and then it is stored away in the document equivalent of Area 51 for 20+ years where you can only pay a third party to allow you see bits of it.

ResearchWill

Ger Roe wrote: »

It seems clear now that I will need a solicitor, but I still don't understand why.

I am not looking to hold the deeds, I am merely looking for the society to forward me a copy. It is a document that I have tied all my resources into (through buying and maintaining my house) and I don't see why I can't simply be provided with a copy for reference. All that is required is a photocopier and some common sense. I am quite willing to pay a reasonable administration fee for the privliege.

In my particular case my train of thought was to get a copy of the document, take a look through it, and then engage a solicitor if I thought there was any merit in doing so.

It seems a bit daft that you get a brief glimpse of a document on the day that you sign up for it and then it is stored away in the document equivalent of Area 51 for 20+ years where you can only pay a third party to allow you see bits of it.

Deeds can run to copies of many many documents, each running to many many pages. Your estate could have been originally the property of the Earl of whatsit who gave it as a gift to his nephew, who gave a deed to someone else who carved a bit out to the next person.

It could in fact be lots of paper in your title, and the thing you might be looking for could go back not to the deed to you but a previous deed. So every document would need to be looked at. The easiest way is to have a solicitor take up you title deeds, he will then be able to answer your question. In fact if there are a number of houses in the estate best to come together and get one solicitor to deal with the matter, would not cost much and would more than likely be cheaper than what the bank would charge for copying.

Predalien

Just a suggestion, but do you know if the property is registered or unregistered? If it is registered you can get a copy of the folio from the Land Registry which should detail any burdens attached, if unregistered you can inspect the memorial at the Registry of Deeds. This might not have the info you need and you might still need to get a look at the deeds but could be helpful.

MagicSean

Ger Roe wrote: »

It seems clear now that I will need a solicitor, but I still don't understand why.

I am not looking to hold the deeds, I am merely looking for the society to forward me a copy. It is a document that I have tied all my resources into (through buying and maintaining my house) and I don't see why I can't simply be provided with a copy for reference. All that is required is a photocopier and some common sense. I am quite willing to pay a reasonable administration fee for the privliege.

In my particular case my train of thought was to get a copy of the document, take a look through it, and then engage a solicitor if I thought there was any merit in doing so.

It seems a bit daft that you get a brief glimpse of a document on the day that you sign up for it and then it is stored away in the document equivalent of Area 51 for 20+ years where you can only pay a third party to allow you see bits of it.

Basically, Irish Land law dates back to the age of cavemen. It's not simply a few pages of information on your deeds. It's every little thing that has happened between the date it was first claimed and the date it was put in your name.

Ger Roe

Predalien wrote: »

Just a suggestion, but do you know if the property is registered or unregistered? If it is registered you can get a copy of the folio from the Land Registry which should detail any burdens attached, if unregistered you can inspect the memorial at the Registry of Deeds. This might not have the info you need and you might still need to get a look at the deeds but could be helpful.

Thanks Predailen,

I'll try that route first and see what it does for me.

I appreciate the posts telling me Deeds can contain a lot of information, but what are we talking about - 50 pages, 100, more?.
I often had to supply multiple copies of documents running to 200 + pages for Government departments, and it just had to be done. No big deal, just a bit of time and attention required.

ResearchWill

Ger Roe wrote: »

Thanks Predailen,

I'll try that route first and see what it does for me.

I appreciate the posts telling me Deeds can contain a lot of information, but what are we talking about - 50 pages, 100, more?.
I often had to supply multiple copies of documents running to 200 + pages for Government departments, and it just had to be done. No big deal, just a bit of time and attention required.

There can be deeds dating back to the 1700' odd sizes A4 was not the standard then, also there will be maps. The problem is not just the number of pages but the odd size, it's not just 200 pages of a4 that's be be run through a machine in a fe mins, believe me it could take a few hours to copy deeds.

ynotonavillus

Predalien wrote: »

Just a suggestion, but do you know if the property is registered or unregistered? If it is registered you can get a copy of the folio from the Land Registry which should detail any burdens attached, if unregistered you can inspect the memorial at the Registry of Deeds. This might not have the info you need and you might still need to get a look at the deeds but could be helpful.

In addition to the publicly availailable info at the Land Registry (Property Registration Authority) Because you have an interest in the land you can seek a copy of the instrument used to register it. This will give you essentially all of the info that they hold, you could also seek a copy of the instrument used to register the Mortgage.

I Think it will cost you about 30 quid but may be a way to get what you need.

As far as I remember you go to the office in the Four Courts complex and show your ID, pay your fee Fill out the form and it arrives in the post a few weeks later....

Hippo

Predalien wrote: »

Just a suggestion, but do you know if the property is registered or unregistered? If it is registered you can get a copy of the folio from the Land Registry which should detail any burdens attached, if unregistered you can inspect the memorial at the Registry of Deeds. This might not have the info you need and you might still need to get a look at the deeds but could be helpful.

If it's in the Registry of Deeds you can get a copy of any original memorial - though they won't have a copy of the related map (if any), as these are held by the original lodging solicitor. PM me if you're really stuck on the matter.

Ger Roe

Thanks for the info guys.

Ill try the registry office and see what it turns up. In the meantime I will be meeting with some of the neighbours to see what route we might take together.

Carawaystick

How does the Data protection act not cover this?
Just asking?

ResearchWill

Carawaystick wrote: »

How does the Data protection act not cover this?
Just asking?

Possibly because its not personal information as in the information relates to your property but not you.