How To Find Out Who Owns Land

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How to find out who owns land is something we are asked about all the time.

That’s not surprising as we’re the UK’s Leading service for finding unregistered land owners and have been for almost ten years now.

When it comes to who owns there are two basic answers. One is that the land is registered. The other more complicated situation is that it’s not. We’ll discuss both here. Please note that just because land is not registered doesn’t mean that there isn’t an owner.

Finding the owner of registered land.

Firstly, you can do a Land Registry search to see if the land is registered. If it is registered then you can obtain a title deed for the land via the Land Registry for just a few pounds. It’s a relatively simple process that we’ll go through below.

If the land is registered and if the owners details are on the title deeds but you still can’t locate them. We can help with that, just get in touch for a quote.

How do you find the owner of unregistered land

If the land is not registered then the question of how to find who owns the land is significantly harder to answer.

If you’ve already tried to locate the owner yourself then you might be better off with our service to find the owner of unregistered land.

Used by Taylor Wimpey and the public, our expert team research who owns the land and provides you with a full report.

You can take advantage of our years of expertise in this area and our people tracing skills by clicking our unregistered land owner search here or calling 0113 2825900. Don’t worry you can speak to us in confidence and we can act discreetly when carrying out our enquiries.

If you’ve not carried out any of your own research as yet and feel that you might want to, please read on.

How to find who owns land yourself

Trying to find out who owns unregistered land may seem an impossible task; if you ask around locally nobody knows the owner.

Either they haven’t been seen for years or they live in another part of the country, so now what? Well if it’s not registered then you’re on your own.

There are no registries of owners of unregistered land.

There are no systems to check for owners. All you can do is your digging around to find them or use a service like ours.

If you’ve not found out if the land is registered then you can start by going directly to the Land Registry.

They will need some information from you about the land before they will be able to search for you. Obviously land isn’t as easily identifiable as a property.

Obtaining a Title Register

To obtain the Title Register you will need to get the official Ordinance Survey plan of the area and highlight the piece of land you are querying.

The Ordinance Survey plan must be in the correct scale which is 1:1250 and on the correct mapping system this can be purchased from https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/

Once you have a clear outline of the land you will need to find which HM Land Registry office deals with the area in question. This is not always as obvious as it may first seem, for example the office that deals with the Leeds, West Yorkshire area is an office in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire.

If you are unsure of the correct office information can be found at the Land Registry. Once on the site click “Customer Services” and select “Office Finder”.

You can now visit the correct office with your map and hope they can find the information you require.

If they cannot help the land will be unregistered, if this is the case give us a call on 0113 2825900 and we will be happy to help.

We have outlined here what you need to do and the best ways for getting the information you need. Remember that approximately 35% of land in the UK is unregistered land, so there are no guarantees that you will be successful.

How to find out who owns land that’s not registered

If the land is unregistered then here are some things you can try.

  1. Local enquiries. Someone in the village or town will know who the owner is. Now sometimes you’ll want to keep your ideas to yourself so this might not always be appropriate but if it is then it’s certainly a good place to start.
  2. Historical data. If the land is used for something else now, what was it used for before. This can sometimes lead you to the owners.
  3. Councils – They do own a lot of land. Sometimes though they don’t know what they do own and what they don’t so this can be a problem. It’s always worth checking with them though.
  4. The Crown and land owners – Both easy to contact but not always easy to get answers from
  5. Utility’s – Utility companies do own a lot of land. They have departments that deal with this type of thing and they can often help.

There are lots of other ways to find the owners of unregistered land and our expert team will try each one for you.

If you would like more information about our service then please call us on 0113 2825900 and we will be happy to help.

We hope this short article has helped your answer how to find out who owns land.