Your Title Register Explained: The Entries That Kill Sales

By Lisa Hayes · 20 September 2026

Your title register is the official Land Registry record of who owns your property and what legally comes with it. It costs £7 to download, takes about five minutes to get, and it is the most useful document you can read before you put your home on the market. When a sale collapses for a legal reason, the warning was almost always sitting in that PDF months before anyone said a word about it.

Most sellers never look at it. They hand the job to a solicitor after they have accepted an offer, which is roughly eight weeks too late. By then a buyer is emotionally invested, a chain has formed, and a single line of small print about a restriction or a notice starts costing everybody money. Read it first and you control the timetable instead of reacting to it.

What is a title register, and how is it different from the deeds?

HM Land Registry keeps the definitive record of registered land in England and Wales. It holds more than 27 million titles, covering over 90% of the land area, and it has records for most property sold since 1993. Your title is a digital entry in that register, identified by a unique title number such as AB123456.

People still talk about "the deeds" as though there is a bundle of vellum in a vault somewhere that proves they own their house. For the vast majority of homes, there isn't, and it wouldn't matter if there were. Registration replaced the deeds as proof of ownership. The old paper documents are now historical records, occasionally useful for working out where a boundary was meant to run or what a Victorian covenant actually said, but they are not what a buyer's solicitor relies on.

Two things follow from that, and they surprise people.

First, your register is public. Anybody can buy a copy of yours for £7 without telling you and without needing a reason. Your neighbour can. A nosy colleague can. Your buyer's solicitor certainly will, on day one. There is no advantage in not knowing what is on it.

Second, this guide is about England and Wales. Scotland has its own system run by Registers of Scotland, and Northern Ireland has the Land Registry of Northern Ireland. The principles rhyme, the forms and terminology do not.

How do I get my own title register?

This is a five-minute job and it does not need a solicitor.

• Step one. Go to the GOV.UK "Search for property information from HM Land Registry" service and search by address or postcode. Searching is free.
• Step two. Check the result matches your property. If your address doesn't appear, it may be filed under an older or different address, and you can ask HM Land Registry to search the index map instead.
• Step three. Pay £7 for the title register and, if you want the boundary map, another £7 for the title plan. Both download immediately as PDFs.
• Step four. Read it with this guide open next to you. It is four pages of legalese at most, and the structure is always the same.

Those downloads are fine for everything you are likely to need as a seller. They are not, however, usable as formal proof of ownership. If you need that (a court case, certain probate or immigration procedures), you order an official copy using form OC1, which costs £11 and arrives by post in under a week. There is also a historical register service on form HC1, £11 per date searched, which is how you find out who owned the property before you and occasionally how old the building is.

What are the four parts of a title register?

Every register follows the same layout. Once you know what each section governs, you can scan your own in a couple of minutes and know exactly which bits to worry about.

One warning about the plan. Title plans show general boundaries only. They are not a surveyed line to the centimetre, and HM Land Registry does not normally record exact boundaries. A plan is excellent evidence of roughly what you own and very weak evidence of precisely where the line sits. If you are in a live disagreement with a neighbour, the plan alone will not settle it, and you can read more in our guide to selling a house with a boundary dispute.

Which entries on a title register actually stop a sale?

Here is the honest hierarchy. Most register entries are background noise that a competent conveyancer handles without you ever hearing about them. A smaller group genuinely blocks completion until someone does something specific. Knowing which is which is the whole game.

Restrictions: the entries that block registration, not the sale

This is the distinction almost every seller gets wrong, so it is worth being precise. Under section 40(1) of the Land Registration Act 2002, a restriction is an entry that prevents or regulates the making of an entry in the register. It does not say you cannot sell. It says HM Land Registry will refuse to register your buyer as the new owner unless the stated condition is satisfied.

Practically, that is a distinction without a difference, because no buyer with a mortgage will complete on a purchase they cannot register. But it tells you what you are solving for. You are not trying to get permission to sell. You are trying to produce whatever evidence or consent the restriction demands.

The Form A restriction is the most common one in the country and the least alarming. It simply records that the property is held as tenants in common rather than joint tenants, so each owner's share passes under their will rather than automatically to the survivor. While both owners are alive and selling together, it changes nothing. The moment one owner dies, it matters enormously: the survivor cannot sell alone. Under the Law of Property Act 1925, purchase money must be paid to at least two trustees for the buyer to take the property free of any hidden beneficial interests, so a second trustee has to be appointed to sign the transfer. That is usually the solicitor or a beneficiary, it is a routine deed, and it costs very little. It only becomes a crisis when nobody spots it until the week of completion. We cover the full mechanics in selling a house after a joint owner dies.

Charging order restrictions are a different animal. A creditor who obtained a county court judgment against you and then secured it against the property will have a restriction recorded, and the practical effect is that the debt gets paid out of your sale proceeds at completion. Sellers often assume this kills the sale. It usually doesn't. What it does is reduce your net equity and add a party who has to be corresponded with, which is why you want it identified early rather than discovered by your solicitor in week six. Our guide to selling a house with a charging order goes through the redemption figures and the negotiation.

Consent restrictions are the ones I would genuinely lose sleep over. These require a named third party to certify that the transfer complies with something before registration is allowed. You see them on former housing association stock, shared ownership, Section 106 affordable housing, First Homes, Right to Buy properties still inside the discount repayment period, and increasingly on new-build estates where a management company holds a veto. The clearance itself is often straightforward. The timescale is not, because it depends entirely on an organisation with no commercial interest in your deadline. If your register carries one of these, the single most valuable thing you can do is write to that body the day you decide to sell, not the day you accept an offer.

Notices: someone else staking a claim on your property

Under section 32(1) of the Land Registration Act 2002, a notice is an entry protecting the burden of somebody else's interest in your property. There are two flavours and the difference matters.

An agreed notice goes on with your consent or with evidence supporting the claim. Think of a properly documented option, an estate contract, or a lease. It is protective rather than hostile, and your solicitor will explain it to the buyer.

A unilateral notice is registered without your agreement by someone asserting an interest. Builders chasing unpaid invoices do it. Ex-partners do it. Lenders on informal family loans do it. Occasionally people with no real claim do it, because the bar for registering one is low. The notice does not prove the claim is valid. It just parks a flag on your title that a buyer's solicitor will refuse to ignore.

You can challenge one. As registered proprietor you apply to cancel it using form UN4, there is no fee, and HM Land Registry then contacts the person who registered it. They get 15 business days to object. If they don't respond, the notice is cancelled. If they do object and no agreement is reached, the dispute goes to the Land Registration division of the First-tier Tribunal, which is a slower and more expensive road.

The practical lesson is about timing. A UN4 with no objection is a month of calendar time, which is nothing if you start it before you list and everything if you start it after you have exchanged contracts on your onward purchase.

Home rights notices

If a property is in one spouse's or civil partner's sole name, the other can register home rights under the Family Law Act 1996, which protects their right to occupy. It is not a share of ownership, but it will need to be released before completion, and the buyer's solicitor will insist. In an amicable separation this is paperwork. In a contested one it becomes leverage. If you own in your sole name and your marriage is under strain, check your register now rather than later, and read selling a house without your spouse's signature.

What if there's no register at all?

Around one in ten properties in England and Wales is still unregistered, typically older homes that have not been sold or mortgaged since compulsory registration went nationwide on 1 December 1990. You are not doing anything wrong, and the sale is entirely possible, but it runs on the old system: your solicitor has to prove ownership through the paper deeds and establish a chain of title, which takes longer and occasionally uncovers gaps. There may also be a caution against first registration lodged by someone claiming an interest. If your address returns nothing on the Land Registry search, start with selling an unregistered property and find those deeds before you do anything else.

The entries that don't block the sale but quietly cost you money

These are the ones I care about most, because nobody warns you about them. They do not generate a dramatic phone call. They generate a slightly lower offer, or a renegotiation at week seven that you feel you cannot refuse.

Restrictive covenants sit in the Charges Register and limit what can be done with the land. No business use. No further building without the original developer's consent. No caravans, no trade signs, no keeping poultry. Many are ancient and unenforceable in practice because the person who benefits from them cannot be traced, which is precisely why indemnity insurance exists. But a buyer planning a loft conversion who reads "no alterations without consent" will either want a price reduction or a policy in place. Our restrictive covenant guide covers when to insure and when to seek a formal release. One hard rule: never approach the person who benefits from a covenant to ask permission if you are also considering indemnity insurance. Making contact usually voids the policy.

Rentcharges and estate management charges are an annual payment to a third party, most common in parts of the North West, Bristol and on modern estates where roads were never adopted. The amounts are often trivial. The legal remedies attached to historic rentcharges are not, and buyers' solicitors will report on them at length.

Missing rights are the sleeper issue. Read your Property Register and check that everything you physically use is legally granted: the right of way over the shared drive, the right to run drainage under next door's garden, the right to park in the space you have always parked in. A house whose only access crosses land it has no recorded right over is a genuinely hard sell, and it is not fixed quickly. Our guide on selling a house with a right of way goes into what to do when the paperwork and the reality have drifted apart.

Class of title appears in the Proprietorship Register and most people never notice it. "Title absolute" is the gold standard and what you want to see. "Possessory title" means ownership was registered without complete documentary proof, usually after adverse possession or because deeds were lost. Some lenders decline it outright, which shrinks your buyer pool before you have even listed. It can be upgraded, and it can be insured around, but both take time. Start with selling a house with possessory title.

What should I do with my register before I list?

Twenty minutes, once, before an agent takes photographs. Work through it in this order.

• Check the names. Does the Proprietorship Register show exactly the owners you expect, spelled correctly? A middle name added or dropped since a marriage or divorce is a common and easily fixed mismatch.
• Check the address. HM Land Registry writes to the address on your register. If it still shows a house you left in 2009, update it. It is free, and it is your first line of defence against property fraud.
• Read every restriction out loud. If a restriction names a third party, write to that third party this week and ask what they need to give consent.
• Scan the Charges Register for notices. Anything you do not recognise, ask about immediately. A unilateral notice from a disputed builder's invoice is solvable in a month and unsolvable in a fortnight.
• Confirm your mortgage position. Old charges from lenders you paid off years ago sometimes sit there undischarged. Clear them now.
• Compare the title plan to the fence line. If they disagree, decide how you will explain it before a buyer asks.
• Sign up for HM Land Registry's Property Alert. It is free, covers up to ten registered properties, and emails you whenever an application or official search is made against yours. Worth doing whether or not you are selling, and especially worth it if the property is empty or tenanted. See property fraud when selling a house.

Then put the PDF in the same folder as your EPC, your guarantees and your building regulations certificates. If you are not sure what else belongs in that folder, our list of documents you need to sell a house covers it, and having it ready is one of the few genuinely reliable ways to shorten a conveyance.

How long does it take to clear a problem entry?

It depends almost entirely on whether the fix is in your hands or somebody else's.

Things you control move fast. Correcting a name, updating your address, discharging a paid-off mortgage, appointing a second trustee: days to a few weeks. Things that depend on a co-operative third party (a management company's consent, a creditor's redemption figure) take two to eight weeks and no amount of chasing reliably speeds them up. Things that depend on an uncooperative or missing third party (a contested unilateral notice, an absent freeholder, a covenant release from a beneficiary who will not engage) run to months and sometimes require a tribunal.

Two things worth knowing. HM Land Registry will expedite an application free of charge where a transaction would otherwise be delayed, so ask your solicitor to request expedition rather than assuming the queue is fixed. And a pending application that has not yet completed at the registry is not the same as a problem; your conveyancer can often work around it with an undertaking.

If speed is the thing driving your decision, be realistic about which category you are in before you commit to a chain. There is a wider discussion of what actually moves the needle in selling a house fast.

Do cash buyers and quick-sale companies care about title problems?

Yes, but not in the way estate agents do, and the difference is worth understanding.

A mortgaged buyer is really two buyers: the person who loves your kitchen and the lender who has never seen it. Lenders apply rigid criteria, and title issues that a human would shrug at (possessory title, an odd covenant, a short lease) can produce a flat refusal with no appeal. That is why a title problem so often shows up as a sale collapsing at week seven rather than an offer being lower at week one.

A genuine cash buyer has no lender, so they can look at the actual risk. They will still price it, and they should. What they will not usually do is walk away because a tick-box was not ticked. Some will buy with a restriction still on the title and deal with it themselves, and some will not. It varies enormously between firms, which is exactly why you should not take the first offer that arrives. Comparing cash house buyers matters more when your title is imperfect, not less, because the spread between offers on a complicated title is far wider than on a clean one.

Whichever route you take, having read your own register first is what lets you tell the difference between a fair discount and an opportunistic one. A buyer who quotes a covenant at you as a reason to drop £15,000 is on much weaker ground when you already know it is a 1932 restriction on keeping pigs.

The mistakes I see most often

Five, in rough order of how much they cost people.

Waiting for the solicitor to find it. Your conveyancer will spot every one of these issues. They will spot them after you have accepted an offer, agreed a completion date and started packing. The information costs £7 and is available today.

Assuming a restriction means you cannot sell. It almost never does. It means a condition has to be met. Panic-selling at a discount because a restriction appeared on a register is a genuinely expensive misreading.

Contacting a covenant beneficiary before taking advice. Well-meant, and it can void the indemnity insurance that would have solved the problem cheaply. Ask your solicitor first, every time.

Believing the title plan is a survey. It shows general boundaries. Building an argument with a neighbour on top of a plan alone rarely ends well.

Ignoring an entry because it is old. Age does not expire a restriction or a notice. A 1970s consent requirement from a company that still exists is live, and a bankruptcy entry from a long-discharged bankruptcy still has to be formally removed.

Where to start

Buy your register. Read it this week. If everything in it is clean and boring, you have spent £7 and gained the ability to say so with confidence when a buyer starts negotiating. If it isn't clean, you have found out at the only point in the process where you have time, options and no pressure.

If the register does throw up something awkward and you would rather not take it to the open market, it is worth seeing what your position actually looks like on both routes before deciding. Start with a realistic sense of value using our guide to how much your house is worth, and if you want to see what genuine cash buyers would offer against an open-market sale, you can compare offers here with no obligation to take any of them. A complicated title is a reason to gather more options, not fewer.