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Houses

Each property you own (or rent) is a first-class object in LifeFile. You add it once; documents file against it forever.

Adding a house

Click Add another house on the dashboard's Houses section. The address is the best name — your buyer's solicitor will reference it eventually, and a Boiler Service Certificate filed under "16 High St" reads more obviously than under "Mum's place".

Multi-property households are first-class. Have a holiday flat in Chatel? An investment property let to tenants? Each gets its own tile and its own completeness panel.

The 4-question setup (optional)

The first time you click into a new property, LifeFile offers a tiny wizard:

  1. Do you own it or rent it? Renters skip mortgage docs; owners see them.
  2. Freehold or leasehold? Leaseholders see service-charge statements and the lease itself; freeholders don't.
  3. What kind of property? Detached, semi, terrace, flat. Lightly affects the schedule.
  4. What era? Pre-1900 / Victorian / interwar / post-war / modern. Pre-1980 properties see an asbestos slot at sale-time framing; modern (post-1980) sees an NHBC warranty slot. The rest are universal.

You can also flag features: solar panels, listed-building status, septic tank, woodburner, conservation area. Each unlocks the relevant slot in the schedule.

The wizard is opt-in. Skip it and the schedule shows everything; mark items not-applicable as you go.

The completeness panel

Each property's Setup helper tab shows what good documentation looks like. As of right now, the schedule covers:

  • Title deeds / Land Registry title — owners only
  • Mortgage statement — owners only
  • Lease + service charges — leaseholders only
  • Buildings insurance schedule
  • EPC — needed when selling or letting
  • Gas Safety (CP12) — annual; suppressed for off-grid / oil heating
  • Electrical EICR — five-yearly; required for rentals
  • Building Regulations completion certificates
  • Boiler service history + boiler installation cert / Benchmark / warranty
  • Council tax bill
  • Recent utility bills
  • Survey from purchase (homebuyer / structural)
  • FENSA / window certificates — anything since April 2002
  • Planning permissions — for any extension or alteration
  • Damp-proof / treatment guarantees
  • NHBC warranty — modern (post-1980) builds only
  • Asbestos info — pre-1980 owners, framed as "needed when selling"
  • Solar PV pack, septic tank compliance, listed-building consents — only if the relevant fact is set

Each missing item has a Why & how expander explaining why it matters and exactly where to get a copy if you've lost yours (Land Registry £3, FENSA £25, council planning portal free, etc.).

The headline percentage at the top is the share of applicable items you have on file. Mark items not-applicable to remove them from the denominator.

The two tabs

The property page has two tabs:

  • Documents (default) — every document you've filed against this property, sortable, filterable, openable. Search and tags work here.
  • Setup helper — the schedule + completeness panel above. The wizard CTA shows here if you haven't completed it.

Documents is the default because once you've used the app for a while, getting at the file list is the primary use. The setup helper is a continual cross-reference, not an onboarding wall.

Auto-filing

When you upload a property document — or when LifeFile finds one in your inbox via Gmail Triage — and it isn't immediately tied to a specific house, the dashboard shows an N home documents not yet filed prompt. Click Auto-file now to have LifeFile match each document to a property by address tokens. If it can't tell, the document stays in the unassigned bucket for you to file manually.