Are Your Title Deeds Safe? The importance of storing in a Secure and Safe Environment

For businesses and individuals, title deeds are extremely valuable documents. So when it comes to storing them, ensuring the storage environment is safe and secure is essential. Vault storage facilities need to satisfy some important criteria if title deeds are not to be lost or destroyed.

It seems unlikely, of course, with title deeds so important they are kept under lock and key, whether by banks, mortgage providers (such as banks themselves) or by solicitors. But there is a precedent.

In 2016, one media report revealed that some Irish homeowners had come face-to-face with precisely that nightmare after banks they had lodged their property deeds with for safe keeping had apparently lost them. Renewing these essential documents would cost each homeowner as much as €5,000.

Of course, misplacing an individual deed is bad enough, but for firms that store and manage potentially thousands of title deeds at a time, the need to have both security and a safe storage environment is essential.

After all, the range of documents involve include conveyances, contracts for sale, wills, mortgages and leases – some of the most valuable legal and financial documents that not only prove ownership of land or property, but the chain of ownership.

Vault Storage For Your Title Deeds

Because of the legal significance of title deeds, the original document is important to have, for businesses and individuals alike. Digitizing these documents and storing them electronically is a practical option in many ways, but not always sufficient. For that reason, vault storage is the necessary option.

But storing original hard copy documents has its vulnerabilities that document storage services must be able to protect against. In fact, there are 3 key elements clients need to be sure of before choosing the service provider.

Secure Storage

Much attention is given to the threat of hacking where Cloud document storage is concerned. But when it comes to storing hard copy documents, security is equally important. For businesses, access to documents is usually limited to a set small number of authorized personnel, while personal documents are generally only be accessible to the individual themselves.

Therefore, to control the accessibility of your stored title deed it’s important the document storage service provider offers:

• State of the art facility
• Secure access control
• CCTV
• Fire vaults storage protection

Safe Environment

The environment documents are stored in are also important. That’s because natural disasters, like flooding and storms, can cause the destruction of homes and businesses, including valuable documents. Fire is also a genuine threat that requires attention.

However, another threat is the immediate environmental conditions that paper files are stored in. Where temperatures are too high or too low, and especially when the atmosphere might be damp, can cause significant damage over time.

Storage facilities, therefore, should be:

• Fire resistant
• Flood protected

Simple Retrieval

Of course, document storage is of little benefit if document retrieval is difficult. As original documents are essential, the hard copy title deeds are stored in boxes on shelves. Unless it is properly managed, finding specific documents would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

However, digital cataloguing through a system of barcoding and scanning make the task of finding those documents simple and immediate. Vault staff can identify the specific box a deed is in and its precise location immediately, while where a document copy will suffice, a scanned version can be quickly printed or emailed to a client within minutes of a request.