Land Registry Deeds Advice

Welcome to Expert Answers
Land Registry Deeds Advice
If you want the deeds to your house, or the deed to anybody else’s house for that matter, did you know that if the land’s registered at the land registry, and 95% of the country is registered at the land registry, you can get the deeds to any house that’s registered for just three pounds.
And you can get them off the internet.
They arrive in seconds.
If you want the plan, it’s going to cost you another three pounds, I think that’s a bit of a bargain.
When you’re out and about you may sometimes see a property or a piece of land and think to yourself,
“I wonder who owns that. Could I buy it? It might be a good piece of development.”
Well you can do what’s called a search of the index map at the land registry where you send an ordinance survey plan off to the registry, with a fee.
It varies, the land registry keeps changing the fees, it used to be free, then they started charging, but I think at the moment it’s free again, but it’s only a few pounds.
So once you’ve done your search of the index map, it will then come back and tell you if it is registered and if there’s a title number.
And if there’s a title number, you can buy the deeds for three quid. Bargain.
However, if it’s not registered, and the neighbours don’t know who owns it, the chances are that you’re not going to be able to find out who owns it or whether they want to sell it to you, without an awful lot of research.
And that research very often doesn’t come up trumps.
The government has been trying to get people to register land in the UK with the land registry since 1925.
And in actual fact, in 1925 they enacted the land registration act, to encourage people to do so, but even today in whatever year it is, 2015 now, they’ve still only got 95% of the country registered at the land registry.
So that piece of land that you really fancy buying to build your dream home on, if you can’t find who owns it, I’m afraid there’s no mechanism to allow you to buy it.
Expert Answers, Legal advice in a click