Property Title Certificates

[bk T]

Where do you keep them? Bank? Lawyer or at home?

Mine is with the Lawyer and I've a copy of it. I am thinking whether to take it back or leave it with the lawyer?

What's your opinion?

[Winston001]

Until about 7 years ago you'd have left it with your lawyer or placed it in a bank safety deposit box. People used to lose Certificates of Title all the time and they cost a lot to replace.

However we now live in a digital age and such precious documents no longer exist. All land titles deposited plans and registered documents live inside computers. You will only ever get a printer copy.

You could pick up the title document from your lawyer and frame it as an interesting historical document. However it may now be digitised and no longer exist.

[Winston001]

Just for clarity, Land and Information New Zealand hold extensive archives of original documents, presumably in humidity controlled buildings somewhere. There used to be one archive in Christchurch.

Physical pieces of paper however have not been registered and handled by LINZ since about 2005.

[SP8's]

I have our old certificate and from memory, it was the bank who gave it to us. As Winston said, nice to have if it's an older house and you can see who has owned it ... apart from that, they are only a "historical document" and no longer used.

[decibel]

One of the beauties of the New Zealand legal system, the Land Transfer Office (as introduced by Governor George Grey?) has meant that there has never been any great value in your copy of the property title. If you lose it, get another.

[Paul.Cov]

Given that it's only a matter of time until some rouge hacks the govts info and reassigns the digital ownership data to some crime syndicate, it may be of some comfort to still hold some form of paper based proof of ownership.

Most people spend a life battling to pay the bank for their home. It'd be a shame to also then have to battle some govt dept or offshore hacker to reclaim the same home all over again.

With property titles only changing hands maybe once per 20 years, there could be many thousands of titles hacked before anybody is aware of the act, and potentially only discovered many months after the hack, which could also mean the hacked records are now all that exists within the backups of the data... depending on how they manage their backups... in an Add / Replace / Extend fashion. Ideally they always retain every backup ever made, and simply suppliment those backups with entirely new copies. Storage economies or stupidity will probably see them just storing updated info, which will mean they're protecting the hacked data, not the original, legitimate data.

[bk T]

Remember years back in the 80's I had to pay the Bank something like $500 just to get back the Certificate( after finished paying my morgage). Can't remember why I wanted it back at that time!

[decibel]

...Storage economies or stupidity will probably see them just storing updated info..

Agreed, with politicians like we have, it is only a matter of time.

[coldfront]

Recently I had the need to look up our title deeds after the neighbour started to cause some issues over a fence that had been there for over 30 years. The Solictor holds or deeds and at a cost we could view them but you can go online and order a copy from QVA at a slightly lower cost.

Now we have an email copy and printed it out, the lawyer type holds the paperwork which they would since they are the ones empowered to change the details with land transfer office. Thats another thing we looked into with this neighbour dispute just to tie them in knots...lol