House Doctor: All is not lost if you can't find the deeds to your property

Question: When my wife died, I paid off my mortgage early but, having earlier obtained the deeds, now appear to have lost them. I now want to sell and need to prove that I own the house. What should I do? FC, Plymouth, via email

Answer: For a homeowner, there's nothing more critical than proof of ownership. But while you might be concerned about having mislaid the documents, your calamity isn't as bad as it seems, says Mark Harrison at Savills Private Finance.

"Title deeds are very important as proof of ownership but, in fact, as most properties are registered with the Land Registry, the deeds are, in fact, just a copy of the originals. These originals are held by the Government body."

So while you've lost your version of the deeds, the originals should be lodged safely at the Registry.

"Simply telephone your local registry office or log on to the internet at www.landregisteronline.gov.uk and type in your address and postcode," says a Registry spokeswoman. "This will confirm what is held on the register and, hopefully, your record of ownership."

You can, for £3, download a copy of the document which should suffice; however, if an official copy is needed, the price is £6.

Sadly, though, this might not be enough. It may come as a surprise but not all homes are registered at the Registry. "In most parts of the country, this has been compulsory since the early 1960s and 1970s, but it only became compulsory in the more rural counties and districts in the late 1980s and 1990s," explains a Registry spokeswoman.

So, depending on whether you've lived in your present home for long enough, you could find that your property isn't actually registered with the Government's own property body at all – not through any fault of yours but thanks to an administrative loophole.

If that's the case, you'll have to establish a "statutory declaration" of proof on your property to "reconstruct" a title and log it with the Register as your own.

In a nutshell, this entails proving ownership through previous mortgage payments or legal documents and, no doubt, if you go it alone, it can be a very laborious task.

However, there is an easier way, says Richard Morea at broker London & Country: get somebody else to do the hard graft.

"Ask a local solicitor to apply to the Registry for a 'voluntary first registration'," he says. "But it will cost you more as the Registry charge will have to be paid in addition to the solicitor's charge." This won't be cheap, he adds: expect to add at least a couple of hundred pounds to the bill for such legal work.

Send your property problems to housedoctor@independent.co.uk

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