Land Registry Property Search

Land Registry Property Search

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Article Summary

This article discusses the types of property searches that can be made at the Land Registry, the types of ownerships and the types of Registrations (or Title Registers). Most of our customers do not realise there are so many property-related documents available in addition to the Title Register and Title Plan, e.g. Leases, Associated Documents, Water Reports, Fishing Rights, Boundary documents, Rights of Way documents, and so on.

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Property Search

The expression "property search" is the term commonly used to denote an attempt to find the ownership documents of a property, be a house, farm, shop or plot of land. The ownership documents are held at the Land Registry in digital format and customers can obtain copies, usually within 1 hour of placing an order.

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Type of Property Searches

In order of popularity the following types of property searches are made:

• Title Register for a House
• Title Plan for a House
• Map Search for Title Register where there is no postal address
• Associated Documents
• Prior copies of Title Registers
• Lease
• Boundary Searches
• Title Registers for Blocks of Flats
• Title Registers for Roads and Alleyways
• Title Registers for Woodland
• Rights of Way Searches
• Drainage, Sewerage and Water Reports
• Flood Risk Reports

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Types of Ownerships

The Title Register describes the property and the terms upon which it is held. There may be many different ownerships of a property, e.g. where a builder has purchased a large parcel of land and owns the freehold. He will usually divide the land into smaller house size plots and create a lease for each house, e.g. a lease for 125 years. The houses will be owned by the purchasers as leaseholds. Accordingly, for each house there are 2 ownerships:

• The freeholder who owns all of the land
• The leaseholders who each own a house built upon the land

If one of the houses is quite large the owner may decide to divide it into 2 flats and grant an underlease for each of the flats, e.g. for a period of 75 years.

In this case there will be 4 ownerships:

• The freeholder who owns all of the land
• The leaseholder who owns the house
• The under-leaseholders who each own a flat

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Types of Title Registers

There are Title Registers for each estate in land, and also for some interests in land, e.g.

• Title Register for the freehold estate
• Title Register for the leasehold estate
• Title Register for a registered Fishing Right interest
• Title Register for a Caution Title, i.e. an unregistered property where a person claims an interest in it
• Prior Copies of Title Registers
• Title Register for a commonhold interest
• Title Register for a Rent Charge
• Title Registers for registered Profits a Prendre in gross. These are interests in land such as the right to take peat from it, the right to hunt game (fish, deer, birds), the right to take wood, etc. If there interest is created by Deed for more than 7 years it can be registered with its own Title.

Most of our customers purchase freehold or leasehold Title Registers.