Free land registry search: what you can find without ordering a document, and what needs an official copy

A free land registry search means reading the property facts that public bodies publish openly, without applying for a copy of the register. Sold prices, planning decisions, energy ratings, council tax bands, flood maps and listed-building entries are all there to be read.

What is not published openly is the register of title itself. Anyone may inspect it and take copies, but the copies are supplied on application and are paid for. That is the line this page draws: free to know, versus supplied for a fee.

This page covers England and Wales; Scotland and Northern Ireland keep separate registers and issue separate documents.

The two tables on this page take the questions people type into a search box and match each to the source that answers it without a fee. Read the third column with care.

These sources describe the building and its setting rather than the title, so each answers its own question in full and none of them names the owner.

None of the free sources is indexed to a title number, so a row in one cannot be assumed to describe the same parcel as a row in another.

Sold-price data is free because it is published as an open dataset. It lists the price, date of transfer, postcode, property type and tenure for sales in England and Wales lodged for registration since January 1995.

What it does not do is tell you who holds the title now. Take 9 Mill Lane, a 1930s semi in Preston. If it sold in 2019 and was then transferred to the buyer’s son as a gift in 2024, the open data shows the 2019 sale and nothing about 2024, because no price entry is made for a gift.

The register shows the son as proprietor and keeps the 2019 price entry until a later entry replaces it. That is why a solicitor asks for the title register rather than a sold-price printout: one records history, the other records title. The title register page walks through section B.

Whether a property is registered can be checked without an official copy, because a basic summary exists for each registered address. As at July 2026 more than 90% of the land area of England and Wales was registered, so most addresses come up.

The summary stops short of what you usually need next. It does not confirm that the title found is the land you mean (a detached garage on a separate title, for instance), and it does not name the owner. Some properties are filed under an older or differently spelt address and do not come up at all.

An official copy of the title register settles the point, because it is timed and dated and carries a title number such as LA123456. If no title can be matched, the land may be unregistered, and then the register holds nothing: the original deeds may be with a solicitor, a lender or the owner. The title deeds page explains where old deeds end up.

The official copy of the register, the official copy of the title plan and copies of the documents referred to in the register are never free, because each one is produced on application and is paid for.

There is a good reason for the application step. An official copy is timed and dated to show the register at that moment, and if applications are pending it is dated back to before the first of them was received. That stamp is what makes it admissible in evidence to the same extent as the original.

The same rule covers the filed documents. Where the register says “NOTE: Copy filed”, the registry holds a scanned copy of that lease, transfer or conveyance, supplied on application for a fee. The conveyancing pack page explains which documents are on file and which are not.

Our fee covers the work between an address and a checked PDF in your inbox: locate the title or titles for the address you give us; confirm the match, which matters most for flats, split plots and land without a postal address; apply for the official copies; and check each document against the address you supplied before it is sent.

What determines the amount is which document you order, how many titles the address covers and, for the conveyancing pack, whether a filed document exists. The full amount is shown on the order page before you confirm.

We do not sell a free service. What we sell is the official copy, obtained and checked, within 24 UK business hours. How ordering works is set out on the home page.

The owner’s name is on the register, and only the register states it with authority. A free source can get you close: sold-price data shows when the property last changed hands, and the companies register shows whether a company you suspect of owning it still exists. Neither confirms who the registered proprietor is today.

For that you need section B of the title register, where the entry begins “PROPRIETOR:” followed by the name and an address for service. The address for service can differ from the property, and a company proprietor is shown with its registration number.

Take Flat 4, Harbour Court, a 2005 leasehold flat in Sheffield, where the free sources can tell you it sold in 2017 and that the block’s management company is still active. Only the register, a title number such as SYK123456 for the flat and a separate title for the block’s freehold, names the flat’s proprietor and the freeholder. The who owns a property guide covers section B in full.

The register is searched by land, not by person. Each title has a number, and the public reaches it from an address or a point on a map, not from a person’s name. A search against a private individual’s name is not open to the public, so no free service can take a person’s name and return the properties they own, and UK Land Registry Online searches by address or title number only.

Company names are the exception, up to a point. Open datasets list land owned by UK and overseas companies, but the current state of any title on those lists still comes from an official copy.

Many pages ranking for “view house deeds online free” end at a payment screen. The pattern is familiar: a search box that accepts any address, a results page confirming the property exists, and then a charge to see the document. The confirmation step is the free part; the document never is.

Four things to check before paying anyone, including us.

1. Does the page say what you will receive? An official copy of the register has a title number, an edition date and a timestamp. “Deeds” is a description, not a product.
2. Does it promise a search by the owner’s name? A search against a private individual’s name is not open to the public.
3. Does it quote a delivery term it can stand behind? Ours is within 24 UK business hours.
4. Is there a person you can write to? Ours answers at info@uklandregistryonline.org.uk.

A paid service is not the problem. The word “free” attached to a document that is only ever supplied on application is.

A free source is enough when the question is about the fact it records, not about title. What a neighbour’s house sold for, or whether an extension had permission, is answered by sold-price data and the planning register respectively.

An official copy is needed when a decision depends on who owns the land, where its extent ends, what rights and covenants bind it, or what a lease says. Buying, selling, remortgaging, disputing a boundary and serving a notice on a freeholder all fall on that side of the line.

A rough rule: if the answer has to be shown to a solicitor, a lender, a court or the other side, it needs the timed and dated copy. Free maps show buildings; only the title plan shows the registered extent edged red on an Ordnance Survey base.