Find title deeds, boundaries for a property?

**NigelJK** · 13 February 2017, 12:10

Zoopla gives some of that info. Land registry for boundaries, the fees are very reasonable (around £3 per request) and I think you get some other stuff (like whether there are any charges on the property)

**d000hg** · 13 February 2017, 12:19

Originally posted by NigelJK View Post

Zoopla gives some of that info. Land registry for boundaries, the fees are very reasonable (around £3 per request) and I think you get some other stuff (like whether there are any charges on the property)

I think they use a similar, or worse, data set - never got anything useful from them pre-2000.

**TheCyclingProgrammer** · 13 February 2017, 12:25

There's still a fair bit of unregistered land and property out there but I'm fairly certain almost all property has been subject to compulsory registration on sale since the early 90s. Have you searched on the Land Registry website? It costs £3 to download the documents.

**The_Equalizer** · 13 February 2017, 12:27

Off on a slight tangent, but you don't need to own a property to apply for planning permission on it.

**d000hg** · 13 February 2017, 12:32

Originally posted by TheCyclingProgrammer View Post

There's still a fair bit of unregistered land and property out there but I'm fairly certain almost all property has been subject to compulsory registration on sale since the early 90s. Have you searched on the Land Registry website? It costs £3 to download the documents.

Yeah - I put in the postcode and lists all the properties including the one in question... but ours says "no information available". The only option they present is "search the index map" but that looks slow and uncertain!

**NickFitz** · 13 February 2017, 13:38

The Land Registry is a few minutes walk up the road from me - would you like me to pop in and ask them on my way to town?

**Big Blue Plymouth** · 13 February 2017, 14:12

Originally posted by d000hg View Post

A potential buyer for my late parents' house is asking to see the land boundaries. While they probably had the deeds somewhere they'll be in a filing cabinet somewhere (possible beware of the leopard sign) 500 miles away in deepest Cornwall!

I looked on https://www.gov.uk/search-property-i...-land-registry and the property is listed as "no information" which seems slightly odd as I believe the sale to my folks was mid-late 90's.
I see there's a map search but I have to pay upfront with no idea what it'll return or how soon.

Is there no online way to find the history of a house, like an ancestry tool for property? See when it changed hands, when it was built, etc, etc? It seems like it would be a neat thing to play with!
That aside... how do the solicitors do it? If someone has lived in a house for 40 years as is not uncommon, and lost all their paperwork, etc.

Oh boy, do I know all about this....

I lost the house I was going to purchase for this very reason. After I'd moved in (it's a long story).

Half the house was showing as unadopted on the Land Registry and they couldn't find their deeds.

The only way to sort it was to just find the solicitors who dealt with the conveyancing 50 odd years ago. Trouble is, they bought chunks of land piecemeal from the church over a period of time and it appearedit was never documented.

In short, mortgage co wouldn't release the funds until the LR was sorted.

**quackhandle** · 13 February 2017, 14:28

There were a number of changes around ownership of land with the Land Registration Act 2002.

Be careful you don't lose any land with the adverse possession rule. I had an issue with this were someone was selling land right in line with my house. Solicitor told me to check my deeds (had them going back nearly 200 years) and look for boundaries in yardage.

qh

**d000hg** · 13 February 2017, 14:32

I remember that story BBP... ugh!

The thing is this should be straightforward. It was bought mid-90s (IIRC) by my parents. It's a Victorian farmhouse with a well-defined boundary which hasn't changed (they wanted to buy the adjoining field but the farmer wouldn't sell)... so not the nightmare you were faced with

So 20-odd years ago the solicitor must've found the relevant documents. But it appears to just pre-date online registry. However my query is what the solicitor would do - where would they source the documents? And when it was last sold, before everything went internet, how did the solicitors find documents in "the old days"?

There must be records somewhere of which solicitors were involved, even if they're in a book somewhere.

Find title deeds, boundaries for a property?