I had a word with a conveyancer I know to try and ascertain what Mortgage Deeds are and what happens to them.(posted 8454 days ago)When a house is being sold, the sellers lender will pass all the deeds relating to that house to the sellers solicitor. Unless the new mortgage is with the same lender, that lender will not see those deeds again.
Once completion has taken place, the deeds will pass to the buyers solicitors who will register the title and then pass the deeds to the new lender.
Properties which have mortgages on them have a Charge Certificate. The Charge Certificate remains with that property. In this Charge Certificate are details of what the property is and any restrictions on its use. A note of who the current owners are comes next and at then a note of who the mortgage lender is. If you live in an old house, you’ll see details of previous lenders/owners in the “Charges Register” of the certificate.
The Mortgage Deed is the agreement between you and the lender and basically you sign to say that you have a mortgage and abide by the conditions etc. I took a look at one of these documents today and it is not signed by the lender, only the borrowing parties. I also checked the one my partner has and only the borrower signs that also, so I guess its pretty much standard.
The Mortgage Deed I saw today was just a single page. The one my partner has is 14 pages and incorporates the terms and conditions. Where the Deed is a single page, the terms and conditions of the mortgage are usually in booklet form. These are sent by the lender to the borrower and also to the solicitor.
When the property purchase is completed, the solicitor acting for the buyer sends the Charge Certificate and the Mortgage Deed, which are separate documents at this time, to the Land Registry. The LR registers the two documents and then binds them together as one document, keeps a copy and sends the originals back to the solicitor.
The solicitor sends this now one document to the new mortgage lender who keeps it wherever they keep their deeds.
Therefore when the lender has repo’d a house and sold it off, they pass the deeds to the solicitor acting in the sale which is then sent to the buyers solicitors and that’s it. There is no reason for them the keep the deeds because they have no interest any more. Whether or not they should have kept a copy of everything is another question however.
Taking the above into consideration, a lender who no longer has an interest in a property is not going to have the originals of the Charge Certificate. What I don’t know is what happens to the Mortgage Deed attached to it when the mortgage lender changes. I will find out as soon as I can and let you all know.
I would suggest that anyone who needs a copy of the T&Cs and who can't get it from their lender, should approach the solicitor who acted for them in the purchase. Under Law Society rules, a solicitor must keep purchase records for 25 years, although this is a flexible rule and some only keep for 10.
If you want to go further, you can ask the solicitor for the file itself. It will depend on the solicitor whether or not you get the original file, but in any event you can get a photocopy of everything that is there (you may have to pay a fee for copying).