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You can do a couple of things:-

A. Leave it with them. Costs you nothing however the mortgage that has been paid out remains on the title and the certificate remains in the lenders safekeeping. Good if you are looking at borrowing funds further down the track.

B. Ask for the CT and documentation for releasing the mortgage be sent to you. This means the responsibility for removing the mortgage is up to you - when you want at your cost. You then take all the documentation to the Land Titles Office pay a fee and be given a CT without the mortgage on it. This is sometimes cheaper then asking the lender to do it. But you have to do it yourself - not hard just takes up your time.

C. Ask the lender to remove the mortgage and give you the clear CT. This will cost you the most and takes a couple of weeks. But you don't have to do anything but pay the fee.

You just need to work out do you want the CT at home or not? Do you have a safe or fireproof place for it? Alternatively you could store it at a Bank's safe custody facility which are normally fireproof.

Me personally I would leave it at the Bank but that is because I would be using it for further investment purposes.

I did option B last year melbourne $98.CB was going to charge $200,[hubby and I had a nice lunch in Mel]

I just did option A - it was easier to do nothing and saw no reason to pay for something else when doing nothing was free

Means property is still mortgaged to credit union but with nothing owing on it - as far as I know only disadvanteage of this would be if you wanted to borrow against property with another institution - and anyway you could always do other option when/if you wanted to down the track.

I did it because I have my house on the market.mortgage been paid off 20 years,like helyn I left it in the bank

I like your summary, kyton, and have a question. Let's say our CT gets lost/destroyed at home and we don't even have a photocopy or anything - doesn't the Land Titles Office have a duplicate anyway? Would it be complicated to get another one issued? How does it work with CTs? I know that, for example, home insurance papers are just that - papers, and the insurance company is the source of data and can always issue you another copy, so losing your insurance papers is not a drama. Well, with the good insurers anyway.
Is CT any similar to an insurance policy, or is it more complicated and how? What would be involved in getting another copy of the CT doco?

Not 100% positive but would imagine that if the original was destroyed the LTO would be able to verify ownership and then reissue the CT at a cost. There would no doubt be legal requirements they would require eg ID etc prior to handing over CT.

Nowadays CTs are a simple A4 piece of paper - not like years ago when they had a chain of ownership written on them. They used to be gorgeous huge documents with all sorts of information written on them. You could have the complete history of the property in one place.

Now as ownership is transferred the new CT is printed with only the new details on it. You can go to the LTO and trace the ownership but it can take a while going through all the old books (but oh so much fun!!)

Thanks, kyton

I thought the other advantage was that if you left it with the bank and subsequent loans would have a cheaper establishment fee if you are borrowing against the house...I could be wrong.

kyton's right. It's a PITA and expensive to replace a CT. There would be stat decs to complete and a pile of paperwork, and most people would employ a conveyancer or solicitor to deal with it (although you don't have to), so extra cost there.

It's common sense to keep important documents in your bank's fireproof storage. Whether or not you get the mortgage discharged is up to you, but taking the piece of paper home is insane.

TDL - years ago the main benefit was that the lender could "reuse" the stamp duty from the previous mortgage. I think now there is no stamp duty on mortgages (could be wrong haven't been a lending manager since 2004!) so no benefit there but you may say yourself the mortgage registration costs.

Kek - I agree!! Nice to look at once but no real need to have at home.

Funny but true story - my (sometimes daft) parents are in process of buying another home. They search everywhere for the CT for their existing home then tell me in a panic they have mislaid it - maybe they left it at the Bank? down they go to the Bank with their pile of papers. Yep stuck in the middle of all their bunch of papers was the CT - it had been sitting in Dad's workshop for the last 6yrs!! ARGH....... Luckily the nice Bank officer pulled it out and told them this was the CT. Not the big old fashioned paper they were thinking of LOL.

We keep our birth certificates, marriage certificate, passports, wills and insurance policy documents in our safe custody packet. If we both cark it, our executor will have no trouble locating everything. More importantly, there's zero chance of our losing something, either through carelessness or in a fire or flood.