Purchase Deeds
Pre-registration property deeds (particularly the purchase deed) contain an abundance of information and are particularly useful where historical evidence of property ownership is required for dates preceding digitisation of Title Registers by the Land Registry.
Ownership is usually conveyed or transferred by a Purchase Deed, known either as a Conveyance or a Transfer. If the property is given rather than sold then the ownership deed would be a Deed of Gift. Where the property is inherited upon death then the ownership deed would be known as an Assent. Yet other ways of transferring a property may be by a Deed of Exchange (as where two properties are swapped) or by a Trust Deed, where for example a property has been held in Trust for another person upon his reaching the age of 18. Ownership Deeds are the most important type of Deed sought by customers seeking to discover historical aspects of a property, as they provide the most pertinent information.
They are also useful for establishing the purchase price of a property for dates prior to 2000, when the Land Registry first began to publish this information in the Title Register.
Although ownership of a property is now established by the Title Register and Title Plan, the actual process of transferring a property is by Deed, and usually these Deeds are retained by the Land Registry and available for purchase.
Typical Information in a Purchase Deed
A purchase deed will contain the following useful information:
- The date it was executed (signed)
- The full names and addresses of the parties (i.e. the buyer and seller)
- The purchase price
- A full description of the property being sold (this might be very detailed and may refer to a Deed Plan attached to it (often useful in boundary disputes))
- Restrictive and Personal Covenants
- Easements
Other Deeds
There are many other types of Deeds than purchase deeds. Deeds may be created to grant easements, rights of way, trusts, tenancies in common, and so on.
Whenever a Deed is created there is a Recital Clause which states why it was created. The names of the parties always appear in all Deeds and so all Deeds are useful in helping to trace the history of a property and its ownership.
They are also useful for establishing the purchase price of a property for dates prior to 2000, when the Land Registry first began to publish this information in the Title Register.
Not all of the Deeds are held digitally, but some are held as paper copies. Copies of individual paper Deeds can be obtained separately using our LR3x searches.
When to Apply for Deeds
Prior Editions of the Title Register can only be obtained back to 1993, so tracing the history of a property or its ownership further back than this requires obtaining copies of whatever Deeds have been retained by the Land Registry, using one of our Deeds Search.