You Can't Insure Property Without Title Deeds: A Case Study

So, you’ve done your research on buying at auction. You’ve followed all the rules when it comes to talking to an estate agent and working out what a clever bid for it is. You’ve gone to the auction, stuck to your bid, remained calm and bagged the house you want at the price you wanted. Nothing can go wrong then - right? Wrong. Unfortunately there are other problems that can arise if you’re not careful as homeowner Nicola Richards explains.

“We were very careful when buying at auction to make sure we followed all the advice given to us. However the property we wanted was a repossessed property and there was no time to view it before the auction itself. We decided to bid as low as we could, within reason, in order to put a lot of money aside for renovation. Since we hadn’t viewed the property we told ourselves it would be in a terrible state and prepared ourselves for the worst. Truth be told we were expecting to walk into a total dump, if we were indeed successful in getting the property.”

Auction Day

“On the day of the auction we stuck with our low bid and were amazed – and delighted – when it was accepted! Of course this only heightened our fears that the house was going to be in serious disrepair. If our bid had been rejected it would probably have been because the property was in too good a condition for such a price. Since it was accepted we could only assume the condition was poor!”

The Property

“Amazingly when we viewed the property it was much better than we expected. Yes there were some rooms that needed a bit of work but on the whole the property was in great condition. We were so pleased. It seemed as though everything had worked out perfectly. We had a great new home which we bought at a fantastic price and we didn’t even have to do much work to it! Everything was going well until we looked into the title deeds.”

Title Deeds

“We discovered the title deeds of our property did not actually belong to us or to the lender who repossessed the property. Therefore somebody else effectively had control over the deeds to our home! We were shocked and upset but were told with auction houses, especially repossessed ones this can be the case. We had to get ourselves a solicitor and purchase the title deeds of the property which was extremely time consuming and annoying. You should always do a title deeds search before buying a property to make sure you know who owns the deeds and whether they will be transferred to you.”

If you are in any doubt about the deeds to your property speak to the Land Registry or a solicitor. It is also possible to purchase title insurance to protect your rights to own the deeds should any problems arise in the future or any false claims against the deeds be made.