We purchased our home end of June 2024. I thought now that change of ownership could be done electronically and very fast you would receive deeds quickly.
I also was under the impression if they refunded monies as overpaid or requested additional funds then the deeds should be filed / ready ? Assuming that for them to know exact costs everything must have been submitted.
April this year our Notaires contacted us as i had been chasing. ( Sellers notaire in Paris)
They then replied that Parisian Notaire advised we owed sum of 36e which we paid that day
I know you do not receive original deeds but all we have at the moment is an attestation..
Also find it frustrating that our Notaires do nothing unless i contact them and more annoyingly ( well to me,) they email sellers notaire who is not responding. You would think at least they would respond and say its in the works or our Notaires would request they update as to PP.
So my questions are ! Does it still take over 15 months and more to receive confirmation its ours?
Is there anyway i can check land registry online to see if submitted?
Finally is there a complaints / ombudsman can be contacted.
Yes we have had Tax Fonciere but to my mind thats just they were notified of sale , doesn’t confirm house registered to us ?
For recent transactions, the Attestation is definitely the thing to have. When I was applying for naturalisation, it was the Attestation that the state demanded as proof that I had property. Fortunately, they can’t have looked carefully at the only one I had, and sent, (for the extra bit of land we bought recently) as the initial sale had a copy of each page of the document, duly initialed as @SuePJ has. I think the nice summary document, now attestation, is a more recent development as who wants to copy 20-odd pages of the sale document
Sue bought her house donkeys years ago, as I did. They didn’t do attestations at that time - it was all manual. If you have bought a property in the past 8 or so years ago, the Attestation is all you are given.
I do have deeds but, amazingly, there is no listed way to our entrance from the lane. The Maire has joked recently something about a helicopter if push comes to shove.
Also re notaires and their speed and communicative skills, the one handling my wife’s succession has ignored 2 emails and one personal call to find out if the delay is due to the awkwardness of her successors. They simply will not communicate. Pleased it doesn’t matter as I have written off in my mind the 9,000 odd euros in our savings account, at least I won’t have to pay any bills they might raise.
Ours for the house took more than 2 years to be sent to us (with a refund by cheque drawn on the notary’s account). I’m not sure we’ve even received the deeds for the small wood we bought 3 years ago.
I bought in 2023 and got two documents (attestations?) from the Notaire . Both confirmed the purchase by me and the date etc. and were identical except that one also included the purchase price and the fees I paid - the other did not. The Notaire told me that the former was to prove ownership when requesting connections to services or whenever I need to prove my address, and the latter was for my own financial records. I haven’t received actual copies of deeds.
When we sold our home in France the Notaire gave us a huge bundle, proudly announcing they were now ours to keep. Turned out they are the deeds going back generations, he said they were no longer officially needed and he thought they might be a nice reminder for us and they are, we still have them.
Same for me with the new house. Huge tome of notarial paperwork including all details, plans,costs etc by the builder and the details of both of us, the amount I paid in full and all stamped etc. When we bought the previous house in 1989 we did get a copy of the deeds around a year later with previous history etc and ours included although the reimbursement of too much tax paid which is usual, came back within a couple of months of signing the acte de vente but these were again papers prepared by the Notaire. They kept a copy at the bureau.
I think you can order copies of UK deeds online from the Land Registry? But maybe you don’t get given a physical copy at the time of purchase, not sure.
Indeed. I bought my house in the UK back in… * checks notes * 2012 () and was surprised when the solicitor told me the deeds were all new fangled and done electronically nowadays.
See also UK marriage certificates - couples don’t get the actual marriage certificate any more because that’s just a digital record - instead they get a commemorative bit of paper like a classroom award for good behaviour.
I’ll be staggered if you receive anything else! Most peoples’ experience seems to indicate (as mine does) that with property purchases up to around, say 10 years ago or less, we got the full works but since that time it’s only an attestation, although that was accepted by the Interior Ministry as full evidence of my ownership.
I agree. I double- checked and in 2023, I got two copies of the attestation; both stated that I had bought the house, one copy included details of my purchase price and fees, the other omitted these details.
) and was surprised when the solicitor told me the deeds were all new fangled and done electronically nowadays.