How to find out who owns a house

Whether you're a prospective buyer, estate agent, property journalist, or searching just for fun, you may carry out owner searches for a plethora of reasons. It can be really useful to find out who owns a property, previous purchase prices, mortgage information, along with other important details that may impact a decision to purchase.

But how do you find out who owns a property or plot of land in the UK?

UK Land Registry

The UK Land Registry is a department of the UK government that registers land and property ownership in England and Wales. Containing over 26 million title records, it has information on over 88% of the land mass in England and Wales.

You can conduct a title deeds search on the government website through the HM Land Registry search services. These records include details of the title register, title plan, title summary and flood risk indicator.

Why would you want to find out who owns a house?

Whether you're looking for property prices, property ownership records or pretty much anything property related, chances are you'll find it in the HM Land Registry. They hold a tonne of property related data that people turn to for information and guidance.

They offer a range of services to help people find information about the property owner.

Search for land and property information service:

The Search for Land and Property Information Service was launched in February 2020 to make the data as widely accessible as possible for those in England and Wales. This feature lets users:

• View a subset of register data for free.
• View the latest price paid for a property.
• View the property description as shown in the register.
• Identify if any restrictions or rights exist on the land.

This was designed with the aim to make improvements to the now-retired Find a Property feature. It includes more features such as customer accounts, map searching, digital register and title plan view.

Users can also find information like property deeds and house price data using the Price Paid Data set.

Title summary

If you're looking for freely available data, the HM Land Registry also offers a Property Summary feature. All you have to do is enter the postcode or street name of the house and you'll get a summary of the key points about that property. It's free to use, but will only give you limited information such as:

• The Title Number.
• The property's address.
• A brief description of the property.
• The tenure or ownership type of the property (whether it's freehold or leasehold).
• The price it was last sold for.
• Any relevant mortgage information including the lender's name and address.

Title Register

Accessing the Title Register for a small fee will give you more information than what's available on the Property Summary. You can use the Title Register for most properties in England and Wales.

What is the Title Register?

You can purchase the Title Register through the land and property registry. The Title Register report a includes a number of important details:

• The title number (this is the unique reference code assigned to the registered property).
• The property owner.
• Any easements affecting the property.
• Mortgage information (including the lender's name and address and whether the mortgage has been discharged).
• Historical records of the property's sale price and value.

Benefits of finding out who owns a property

Records of historical sale prices can be really valuable information as it may indicate if there's something wrong with the property. For example, if the property has had multiple owners in a short space of time, this may be a sign the property comes with some issues.

This may impact a buyer's decision to make an offer or change how much they're willing to purchase the property for.

You can also access a Title Plan which gives you information about the property's location. Sometimes it's useful to purchase the documents together, which you can do with the following steps.

It's super simple to access the Title Register of a property. Just follow these steps:

1. Go to the Land and Property Registry site.
2. Press 'Start Now'.
3. Enter the postcode or street name of the property you're looking for.
4. Go to the Property Summary of your chosen property, scroll to the bottom of the page and click 'view available documents'.
5. Create an account (here you'll need the usual account set-up information such as your email address, password, phone number, home address and full name).
6. This takes you to the Title Register and Title Plan. You can pay a cost of £3 per document to access the information.

Some title plans can't be downloaded online which means you won't be able to follow these steps. If this is the case, you can request the Title Plan to be sent by post for a small cost of £7 per document.

Proof of ownership in a court case

It's important to note you can't follow the steps above if you need official copies of the register, for example if you need to use it as proof of ownership in a court case.

In this case, you'll have to fill in Form OC1 and post it to the land registry (along with the fee) if you want an official copy.

Title Register versus Title Plan

As mentioned above, a Title Plan gives you more details on the location of a property, while the Register gives you information on the property itself (including the property ownership information). The Title Plan is a map showing the location of the property as well as details about the local area and its general boundaries.

Flood Risk Indicator

You may also want to search for flood risk information using combined data from the Environment Agency and the Land Registry. The Flood Risk Indicator gives you free access to current flood warnings as well as any long-term flood risk of an area. You could also request a flooding history report, but you may have to pay a £10.80 fee for this.

This tool isn't just useful for a prospective buyer; it may be needed for a property owner looking to sell. Depending on the location, some sellers may be obligated to provide a flood risk report when listing their property, especially if it's located in a known flood risk zone.

UK property owners outside of England and Wales

There are different registers for Scotland and Northern Ireland. If you're conducting a property owner search in these countries, you'll have to go directly to their own property services. The fees in Scotland and Northern Ireland may also differ.

In Scotland you can access current ownership and property prices for free using Scotland's Land Information Service. Similarly to England and Wales, you can access more information for a small fee.

In Northern Ireland, there are a range of different services across the Northern Ireland Registry, all of which come with a different cost. In terms of a basic property search, you can look for the current owner of a property for £5, while an uncertified copy of the property folio costs £7.

Other ways to find out who owns a house

If the above method doesn't work for you, there are other reliable ways to find out who owns a property. For around £35, you can hire a tracing agent to find the information for you. As professional investigators, they'll have access to more data that the general public won't have access to.

Unregistered properties

The UK Land Registry began registering the buying, selling and mortgaging of properties in England and Wales in 1993. If a property is unregistered, this is probably because there haven't been any recorded transactions for that property since registration came into effect.

Luckily there are ways to find out who owns an unregistered property. It sounds like an old fashioned method, but your first port of call should be to chat to the locals, especially those who have lived in the area for a long time. You'd be surprised at how much information you can find out from asking around!

If you can't find details from the locals, you can find out if any planning applications have been made by accessing public records from the County Record Offices. Applicants are legally required to certify whether they are an owner of a property or if they've served notice on the owner. You might also find more information about previous owners from the electoral register.

If you're looking into who owns an unregistered land, you could also check adjoining registered properties to find out more information about the owner.

Summary: HM Land Registry marks the spot!

Whether it's to inform your next house purchase, help advise a client, or just satisfy your own curiosity, there are plenty of reliable ways to find out who owns a house.

You can find all the important documents with the HM Land Registry search services, from information about the owner to flood risk indicators. The basics can be accessed freely, while more detailed information can be found for a small fee.

So if you're interested in a property, want to start a new development project, or maybe you're just intrigued by what's going on in the world of property, all the information you need can be found with just a few clicks.

If your search just can't wait, you can get an instant valuation using our Online Valuation Tool here!