Land registry search in Northern Ireland: title folio and title map for any address

A land registry search in Northern Ireland starts from the postal address or the folio number and ends with a PDF of the title folio, the title map or both. The register is arranged by folio, so the address or the folio number identifies the record; a person’s name does not.

On the order form, enter the postcode or address, add the folio number if you have it, and give an email address. Choose the title folio for the owner, class of title and burdens; choose the title map for where the holding lies.

We confirm that a folio exists before anything is bought, then email the PDF within 24 UK business hours, or within 1 UK business hour on fast-track. How ordering works is on our land registry search home page, which covers England and Wales only.

Northern Ireland runs two records side by side: the land registry for Northern Ireland holds folios, each tied to the registry map, and the Registry of Deeds holds memorials of deeds affecting land that has never been registered. A property is on one or the other, and that decides what can be ordered.

The folio system dates from 1892, and the register is conclusive evidence of the titles it shows. Registration was compulsory from the start for farms bought with state advances, which is why an estimated three quarters of Northern Ireland by area was registered by 1935 while town houses mostly were not.

The Registry of Deeds records that a deed exists and the date it was registered, which fixes its priority against later deeds; it does not vouch for the deed’s validity. Each memorial gives the deed’s nature and date, the grantor and grantee, and the land by street, town, townland and county. The earlier Irish record, from 1708 to 1922, is held by the public archive.

A property on the Registry of Deeds has no folio and no place on the registry map, so neither document exists for it, and we do not supply memorials. Planning conditions and tree preservation orders sit on a third record, the Statutory Charges Register set up in 1951, not on the folio.

The test is whether the property has been sold for value since compulsory first registration reached its district. A sale of the freehold, or the grant or sale of a lease with more than 21 years to run, obliges the buyer to apply for first registration within three months. The dates arrived in stages, by the 26 local government districts that existed before 2015.

Since 1 May 2003 every sale for value of land in Northern Ireland has had to be registered. A gift, an inheritance, a mortgage, a lease of 21 years or less, or an exchange with no money passing does not trigger registration, so a Belfast house held by the same family since 1985 may still be on the Registry of Deeds, while a Fermanagh farm bought with a state advance a century ago has had a folio all along.

A folio is the section of the register that records the title to one holding, under its own folio number, in three parts. Part 1 describes the land, refers to any lease and lists rights over neighbouring land; Part 2 gives the registered owner and the class of title; Part 3 lists the burdens, meaning charges, rights of way, covenants and other adverse matters.

Two kinds of entry are engrossed in red: a caution, which entitles a claimant to notice before the registered owner deals with the land, and an inhibition, which stops dealings by anyone until a stated condition is met. Folios computerised from paper also carry a scanned image of the original paper folio, which often holds the substantive entries; our title folio for Northern Ireland page goes through the three parts entry by entry.

The registry map is the Northern Ireland registry’s map of every registered holding, drawn over the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland base with the registry’s own edgings, colours and text on top. The title map is the extract for one folio, headed with the county, folio number, scale and sheet number, with the folio’s land picked out by a letter label and keyed, for example, “a – AR118204”.

Every copy map states that it is for location purposes only and that “Folio boundaries are not guaranteed”: the map shows where the holding lies rather than the exact line of a fence. Each copy map carries its date of issue, and our title map for Northern Ireland page explains what the map does and does not settle.

There is no separate land registry for Belfast, Derry or Newry: a search for “land registry Belfast” is answered by searching a Belfast address in the one land registry for Northern Ireland. What differs from place to place is the county code and the date compulsory registration arrived; none of the eleven councils keeps the register.

Belfast straddles a county boundary, with the River Lagan dividing County Antrim from County Down, so a house on the Antrim side carries an AN folio number and a house in east Belfast carries a DN number. Belfast came into compulsory first registration on 1 May 2003, three years after the North Down district next door.

A modern folio number is a two-letter county code followed by digits: AN331652 is in County Antrim, AR118204 in County Armagh and DN147809 in County Down. A leasehold folio, opened when a lease of more than 21 years is registered over land already on a folio, carries an L at the end, such as AN331653L.

Older holdings, many of them farms registered before 1939, are numbered plainly and qualified by county: “Folio 6410, County Tyrone”. Both styles are in use, and the registry’s own forms warn that an incomplete folio number can be matched to the wrong folio, so give the county or code whenever you have it.

One part of the folio, or the map, answers most questions about a Northern Ireland property.

Four invented examples show what the record holds for each kind of property.

The Omagh house is the Northern Ireland trap: a property can be old and well documented and still have no folio, because nothing since 2003 has forced it onto the register.

The registered owner of a Northern Ireland property is named in Part 2 of its folio, so the way to find out who owns a registered property is to search the address and read the folio. Our search runs from the property, not the person.

Where the owner has died a note of death may appear in Part 2 until a transmission moves the title to the person entitled; do not count on a price being shown. Our guide on how to find out who owns a property covers England and Wales only.

A postal address usually finds a house in a town. Land in the country is described by townland, and a rural copy map can carry several labelled parcels, so a farm is a folio and a map rather than a house on a street.

When an address does not come up, tell us what you know: the townland and nearest road for a farm, the apartment number for a flat on a leasehold folio, and the developer’s name for a new house still inside the parent folio. A field or laneway with no postal address cannot be found by postcode; describe what it adjoins and we confirm the folio with you first.