It occurred to me recently that I don’t have anything proving that I own my home. My closing papers from 22 years ago are somewhere in my filing cabinet. I don’t get a mortgage payment book anymore because the house is paid off. I do have my house insurance bill and county property tax bill.
Am I supposed to have a deed or something? If I wanted to sell my house what documents do I need? Or if I die then what would my relatives need to prove I owned a house?
I was really disappointed at how anticlimactic it was paying off my house. I made extra payments on the principal for 15 years to get it paid off early. I didn’t get anything from the mortgage company except a letter with a rebate check. I overpaid by under fifty bucks. You see guys burning the mortgage document in the movies. That didn’t happen. I didn’t have anything to burn.
The mortgage company didn’t even notify my insurance and tax people that they weren’t paying from escrow. I realized my bills didn’t come and had to call myself to get that switched to my address.
Deeds reside at the Registry of Deeds, in the US typically located in the town/city that is your county seat. The document that’s kept there is considered official, but you should keep a copy, simply out of interest. Indeed, you should have checked the previous deed before you bought your house - lots of interesting facts (e.g. precise specification of property lines, rights of way, etc.) appear there.
When you obtained your mortgage, the bank registered this as a lien on your property with the Registry of Deeds. This filing was what gave them the right to demand payment if you sold the property, or to foreclose if you’d failed to pay as you’d agreed to.
When the mortgage was paid off, the bank was supposed to record this fact via another filing (sometimes called a “satisfaction piece”) which signifies that they no longer have the right to demand payment or to foreclose. You should certainly verify that this has been filed - without it, attempting to sell the house will be a major hassle (no sane buyer will close until recorded liens show as having been fully & formally discharged).
So hie yourself down to your RoD and obtain copies of these documents.
I’ll check for sure that the lien was removed by the mortgage company.
It worries me that the mortgage company never notified my insurance or county taxes that they weren’t paying from escrow. I could have lost my insurance if I hadn’t discovered this in time. I’m pretty sure it’s the mortgage company’s responsibility to file the change of billing address.
It’s been over six years ago that I got everything paid off. Not a peep from the mortgage people. So, I guess they got me free and clear on their books. FWIW it was Midland Mortgage. My mortgage got sold and passed around three times during it’s life.
I’ve often wondered how they figure out who owns property. They find someone dead in their home. But that person may also own a cottage at the lake or a parcel of land somewhere. How would the authorities know this guy owned this other property? Do they just check a database somewhere?
No database. The guy’s heirs may know about the lake house. If they don’t, some years later someone may be able to take title through adverse possession or, more likely, through a tax redemption sale. All “the authorities” know is whether the taxes are paid up.
In the Anglo-American system, you have a central register (by county) of who is the owner of record of every piece of property (though in some states that might be a blind trust). But there’s no record kept of what properties a particular person owns.
When I paid off my mortgage 21 years ago, I got a big pile of documents from the bank that included all the deeds going back to when the house was built and, I think, a certificate that we had cleared the mortgage. I figured that those deeds were important and would have to go to the next buyer (or his mortgage company). This is in Montreal and probably not typical. I suspect the college of notaries has all this online, just like my will. Notaries handle all real estate transactions and all wills in Quebec.
In several provinces in Canada the law has been changed so the (now, electronic) land registry is the ultimate determinant of ownership.
This resulted in a sad court case in Ontario where a couple was told they had lost their house. A fraud artist knew they had paid off their house, went to some bank, prentended to be the owner, got a big mortgage which the bank registered with the lands branch. First the real owners knew was when the bank hadn’t been paid for a while and started to foreclose. The court said “sorry, the law was written that the registered transactions are valid, no exceptions, so the bank has claim to the house unless you pay off the fraudulent mortgage. If the legislature wanted to allow for excetions for fraud, they would have said so.” (Hence - the letter of the law is important!)
For a while this sort of transaction was becoming a common danger, until the courts and the legislature corrected this problem; but when I bought my new house I had to provide SOLID proof of identity to the lawyers who were going to register the transaction. (I think now a bank or real estate company, or lawyer, who registers a fraudulent transaction can become liable for the cost).
When I sold my old house, the lawyer for the buyer wanted the old deed I had gotten years ago, as these were being collected. (to avoid conflicting claims).
You should have the deed to your property in your possession. Fortunately, in virtually all US jurisdictions the County Clerk or Register of Deeds will have a copy of it on file. Your deed demonstrates that you hold title to your property. You should have gotten it either (a) when you first bought the property, subject to a mortgage, or (b) when the mortgage was discharged. A title search company can provide an Abstract of Title showing the descent of title to your property from the first grant by the sovereign entity controlling it at the time down to the present, including any easements, mortgages and their discharges, etc.
If you do not have that deed, contact the bank/mortgage company, and get a copy.
Not in precisely that form. But there typically is a Grantor/Grantee index, organized by name, which shows transactions in which a person was the Grantor (i.e. seller) or Grantee (buyer). This index will make reference to the deed which records all details of each transaction.
So it’s reasonably easy to answer such questions as “What properties in XYZ County did John Q. Smith buy?” and “Of those, which did he later sell?”
When you bought your house, it is likely that your lawyer had a title search done to insure that the people who you bought it from actually owned it. This also included title insurance which basically says that if there was a defect in the title, the insurance would cover the cost of correcting the defect. These papers are likely in the papers you received from the lawyer at closing. I don’t really know if these records are kept with the deed, but I would want to keep these papers myself.
LexisNexis and other services aggregate this sort of data from deed registrars so you can, in fact, search for all the real property owned by a person.
The OP is in Arkansas, where apparently the lienholder doesn’t have to formally notify the borrower of satisfaction unless asked:
Presumably, it’s routine to ask. Who would be interested in buying a house whose owner said “Don’t worry, that lien was paid off - I just never got around to asking the bank to acknowledge this.” ?
Shortly after I bought my house over twenty years ago, I learned that there was an additional annual payment due from me to the company that built the sewage system for my development. It was, essentially, another mortgage. (The seller snuck it past me). I paid it annually (it was around $200 per year) and eventually paid off the balance after I had paid off the primary mortgage. There was a form I could buy for $15 and file with the county that would provide me a release of lien from this mortgage (the company holding it also offered to provide me a release of lien from this mortgage for $200). I plan to keep that release with my primary mortgage release, along with a copy the deed.
Bottom line: if you are making any other such payments, like frontage fees, you might want to check whether you are paying another ‘double-secret’ mortgage, in which case you should get a release when it’s paid off.
Questions like the OP and the comment about the improvement payment for the sewage make me soooo glad Saskatchewan uses Torrens title. Proof of ownership, mortgages and liens are all provided through the land title system.
I didn’t have anything to burn.