House deeds - Where to store it ?

Our solicitor holds ours with our wills. No charge.

If you do store it offsite with solicitor etc., make sure to copy first and keep them separate. At least then you have something, when as happens with a relative of mine, their solicitor lost the wills and other documents.

Having been executor to a few wills over the years, I can tell you it was so much less hassle when the solicitors already had the deeds to hand.

You can rent out safe-deposit boxes for a few hundred a year. Many people do this to store gold bullion:

The smallest box is 250 per year, which should be sufficient for a deed. Otherwise, you could buy a fire / water proof safe and install it in the floor of the house. My parents have left the deed of the house with their solicitor, but as someone who used to work in the legal side of land-ownership, solicitors can and do lose things.

Congratulations on the completion of the mortgage :)

I thought deeds now were stored electronically in the land registry? I certainly dont have any for my current home.

The newer system will only keep the original transfer and issue a folio. But any original certificates from engineers for planning etc will be part of deeds if house was built after planning and building regs came it. So they can be expensive to go back and recreate if lost.

My solicitor shut without warning with my deeds 'somewhere' and no means to contact them. In operation over 100 years and poof, they're gone.

Solicitors may not provide the cast iron safety that they might appear to.

My Dad was executor for my grandmother (Mum's side) and she passed away circa 2007 - finally came to selling the house soon after; solicitor had lost deeds and didn't show much interest in trying to find them - along comes the recession and finally after new deeds had been put together etc the house was sold probably 30-40% less than what it would have sold for initially.

6 months later.. what turns up with solicitors; Yep... the deeds. No apologies.. nothing. Just a letter that we have your deeds and you can come collect.

My view is solicitors are the very bottom, or top, of that steaming pile.. would definitely not leave deeds with them because if they lose them they won' give a toss and go try find a solicitor who will take on another solicitor!

Maybe, or maybe not.

My understanding is that there are no deeds with newer houses. You own the plot of land and everything on it and the plot is registered in your name with the land registry as such. I don’t have deeds for my house, or half my farm. I have folio numbers registered in my name. There are some other plots then I have a paper deed.

Older houses may have a slip of paper as a “deed” detailing again the plot of land as such. Often when these change hand now a days they move to being registered in the land registry also. But land changes are often only a generational thing, once every 50 years plus.

I used this company to store mine and was very happy with the service. They are a solicitor based in Lucan. It was €30 per year when they stored mine I believe that has now increased to €40 per year.

Ha ha I imagine they are stored off site the office there is pretty small. I got hard and soft copies of the deeds included in the fee. It worked out much cheaper than using one of the vaults.

Before 2008 some houses were not registered so if you lose the deeds you could have a problem selling the house in future

If you search online you can click on a particular address if it says folio no ,....234,.etc its registered