Previous Owners of My House UK

Previous Owners of My House

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Finding Previous House Owner Names

Obtaining details of previous owners of your house, or any house, in the UK is straight forward so long as the house was registered during the period of your search. The fact that the Title Register only shows the current entries of ownership, without showing previous owners, is not a bar to finding details of previous owners through a Land Registry search. It is done by applying for a Prior Edition of the Title Register, using our Prior Copies Search.

Furthermore, previous owner details can be ascertained for dates even prior to first registration of title, by using our Associated Documents search, which is an optional addition found on our Prior Copies search form.

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Previous Owner Search Choices

Some of our customers only wish to know the ownership details of a property for a specified number of years. Others, however, would like to know the owners details since the property was purchased, and may also wish to know historic details of the house or land itself.

We have 2 types of History Searches:

• Prior Copies Search
• History of Houses and Land Search

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Prior Copies Search

The names of all persons who have ever owned your house since it was registered can be provided to you by email within a couple of days. This is a simple exercise and is carried out as in the following example:

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Sample Prior Copy searches to ascertain all Previous Owners since First Registration

(In the samples below, information you are looking for is highlighted in red)

Step 1: Obtain a copy of the current title register. You will be looking for 2 dates, as shown in the brief sample below:

1. The date of first registration
2. The date of the current owner's registration

The first date is the date of first registration. Prior copies of the register cannot go back beyond this date or beyond April 1993, when records were first digitised by the Land Registry. When you wish to trace back further you will be looking for purchase deeds in place of prior copies of the register.

The second date is the date of the current registration, which is the date to start searching back from.

Step 2: Apply for a prior copy search for a date a little earlier than the current owner's date of registration, say 3 months earlier. In the above example this would be 14 April 2012.

From this point on you are only looking for dates of registration of the owner, as the date of first registration will always be the same. So you will be looking in the B section of the register.

A sample of the B section in the prior copy may look as follows:

So far the history of ownership looks as follows:

2012 - 2017    John Summers
2009 - 2012    Richard Thomas

Step 3: Repeat step 2 but for a date a little earlier than 10 Sep 2009. The prior copy may look as follows:

The history of ownership now looks as follows:

2012 - 2017    John Summers
2009 - 2012    Richard Thomas
1996 - 2009    Edward and Elizabeth Grainger

From the preceding prior copy it is apparent that Mr and Mrs Grainger were the first people to apply for registration of title, so you are unable to search back any earlier (1993 would have been the earliest date anyway, when records were first digitised). Supposing you wish to go back to 1900. Although you can't obtain further prior copies you can instead use the Associated Documents search to obtain copies of any purchase deeds that have been noted on the register. These deeds will show the date of purchase and the names of the buyers and sellers.

Step 4: To ascertain if there are any purchase deeds available to buy you should return to your copy of the current title register and look to see if there are any purchase deeds that have been noted as copied. A purchase deed will either be a Transfer, a Conveyance, an Assignment or a Deed of Gift.

An example of a register containing a note of a copied Transfer is as follows:

Step 5: Apply for a Associated Documents search. Return to our website to order the search. In the comments box on the application form you should state that you wish copies of all Transfers, Conveyances, Deeds of Gift and Assignments. You will receive all those copied for the one price.

Step 6: Assuming there is only 1 purchase deed, the transfer as mentioned above, which reveals that the property was sold by Mr and Mrs Jones in 1983 to Mr and Mrs Whittaker, a summary of the purchase history now appears as follows:

2012 - 2017    John Summers (current register)
2009 - 2012    Richard Thomas (prior copy)
1996 - 2009    Edward and Elizabeth Grainger (prior copy)
1983 - 1996    Alan and Mary Whittaker (transfer)
Unspecified date to 1983    William and Frederick Jones (transfer)

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History of House and Land Search

This search will allow you to discover all the information in the Prior Copies search, for the full period of registration, no matter how many different ownerships there have been, and will also provide details of the recorded historic details.