A report on title is the plain-English summary your solicitor prepares after reviewing every legal document, search result, and enquiry response tied to the property you want to buy. It gathers the Land Registry entries, local authority results, environmental findings, lease terms, and the seller’s own disclosures into one advisory document so you can decide whether to proceed, renegotiate, or walk away before you exchange contracts. Once you sign to confirm you accept its findings, exchange usually follows within days, and from that point you are legally committed. Reading it carefully is the last clear chance to catch something expensive.
Who Owns the Property and on What Terms
The first job of the report is to confirm the seller actually has the right to sell. Your solicitor pulls the Land Registry entry, which records the title number, the registered owner’s name, and the class of title. Most residential buyers should see absolute title, the strongest class available for both freehold and leasehold.1Legislation.gov.uk. Land Registration Act 2002 – Classes of Title
If the report shows a lesser class, your solicitor will explain the practical consequences and whether a lender is likely to accept it:2Legislation.gov.uk. Land Registration Act 2002 – Explanatory Notes
- Possessory title is granted when the owner is in physical possession but cannot prove ownership in the usual way, often because the deeds were lost or because the claim comes from long, uncontested occupation.
- Qualified title is rare and is issued when the owner’s claim can only be established for a limited period or is subject to specific reservations.
- Good leasehold title means the leaseholder’s position is sound but the superior landlord’s title has not been registered or formally proved.
The report also states whether the property is freehold or leasehold. Freehold means you own the land indefinitely. Leasehold means a fixed-term interest with ongoing obligations to a landlord, and it triggers an entire additional layer of the report.
The Title Plan and the Boundaries on the Ground
A copy of the Land Registry title plan comes with the report. Your solicitor checks whether the physical boundaries you walked around with the estate agent — fences, walls, hedges, driveways — match what the plan shows. Mismatches here are a leading cause of neighbour disputes, so a flagged discrepancy is worth taking seriously before you sign anything.
Rights, Restrictions, and Charges on the Land
A large part of the report deals with third-party interests on the property. These normally sit in the Charges Register of the title and either limit what you can do with the land or grant rights to someone else over it.
The usual categories are:
- Easements, meaning rights held by a neighbour or utility company over your land, such as a right of way across your drive or drainage pipes beneath your garden. The report tells you which rights benefit your property and which burden it.
- Restrictive covenants, meaning promises made by a previous owner that still bind the land. Common examples prohibit extensions, running a business from the home, or altering the front of the property without consent. Some were imposed decades ago by the original estate developer and are still enforceable.
- Financial charges, meaning any mortgage or legal charge registered against the property. The seller must discharge these at or before completion so the property transfers free of their debts.
Breaching a restrictive covenant can lead to an injunction forcing you to reverse the work, or to a damages claim. If you have plans for the property, check them against this section before you commit.
Chancel Repair Liability
In parts of England and Wales, certain properties carry an obligation to contribute to repairs of the local medieval parish church. The liability runs with the land. Since October 2013, it only binds a new buyer for value if protected by a notice on the Land Registry title, so your solicitor either checks the register or recommends a chancel repair search. Where there is a risk but no registered notice, indemnity insurance is the standard, inexpensive fix.
Leasehold: Where the Biggest Problems Hide
If the property is leasehold, as most flats in England and Wales are, the report contains a separate layer of detail that often decides whether the purchase makes financial sense.
Years Left on the Lease
The remaining lease term is the single most important figure in any leasehold report. Most mortgage lenders want to see at least 70 to 80 years remaining, and 80 years is the practical threshold. Below that, the cost of extending the lease rises sharply because the leaseholder must pay marriage value, which is roughly half of the increase in the property’s value that the extension creates. Marriage value typically accounts for a third to half of the total extension premium. A flat with 75 years left is worth materially less than one with 125, and some lenders will not lend at all below certain thresholds. Your solicitor will advise on the current position when the report is prepared.
Ground Rent and Service Charges
The report sets out the ground rent payable to the freeholder and whether it increases over time. For new leases granted on or after 30 June 2022, the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022 limits the permitted rent to a peppercorn, effectively zero.3Legislation.gov.uk. Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022 Older leases are not covered by that cap, and some contain escalation clauses that double the rent every ten or twenty-five years. A ground rent starting at £250 and doubling every decade can reach figures that make the property unmortgageable, so your solicitor will flag any escalation mechanism.
Service charges cover communal maintenance, buildings insurance, and sometimes a sinking fund for major works. The report summarises current charges, recent accounts, and any planned major expenditure such as roof replacement or cladding remediation. A flat that looks affordable can become expensive once a £15,000 special levy for fire safety work appears in the next cycle.
Planning Permission and Building Regulations
The report checks whether physical changes to the property — extensions, loft conversions, structural alterations, replacement windows — received the required planning permission and a building regulation completion certificate. These are separate approvals, and having one does not guarantee the other.
Missing certificates are common for work done in the 1980s and 1990s. The usual solution is indemnity insurance, a one-off policy typically costing between £20 and £300 depending on the property’s value and the nature of the risk. The seller usually pays, though that is negotiable. The policy protects you against future enforcement action by the local authority.
One point worth being clear about: indemnity insurance does not certify that the work is structurally safe. It covers your financial exposure if the council takes enforcement action, nothing more. Concerns about the quality of the building work itself are a job for a survey, not the report on title.
What the Searches Actually Mean
Your solicitor commissions a battery of professional searches and translates the technical results into practical advice. The core searches for a residential purchase are:
- A local authority search, which reveals whether the property is listed or sits in a conservation area, confirms that extensions and alterations have the necessary approvals, identifies any planned road schemes nearby, and flags tree preservation orders. Local authority searches typically cost between £250 and £450.
- A water and drainage search, which confirms whether the property connects to the public mains and public sewer and identifies any public drains running through or near the property. A public sewer crossing your garden can restrict where you build.
- An environmental search, which assesses flood risk, ground stability, contaminated land from former industrial use, and radon gas levels. A former landfill or factory site will show up here along with potential cleanup liabilities.
- A chancel repair search, as described above.
In some areas, additional searches are standard. Properties in former coalfield areas need a coal mining search. Properties near the coast may require a coastal erosion assessment. Your solicitor decides which searches are necessary based on location and lender requirements, then explains what each result means for your insurance costs, your use of the property, and its resale value.
What the Seller Has Said
Alongside the official searches, your solicitor reviews the seller’s answers to pre-contract enquiries, primarily on the Property Information Form (TA6 in England and Wales). The TA6 asks the seller to disclose, from their own knowledge, matters such as boundary disputes, complaints from or about neighbours, guarantees and warranties for work carried out, insurance claims, and any notices received from public authorities.
The solicitor cross-references the seller’s answers against the search results and the title documents. If the seller says no building work has been done but the local authority search shows a planning application, that mismatch gets flagged. Sellers who give inaccurate TA6 answers can face legal claims after completion, so these answers carry real weight.
Mortgage Lender Requirements
If you are buying with a mortgage, your solicitor acts for both you and the lender, which is standard in residential conveyancing. The report must confirm to the lender that the title is good and marketable, meaning it is free from defects that would prevent the bank from recovering its money through a future sale.
Lenders impose their own conditions on top of the basic legal checks. These commonly include proof that any asbestos has been professionally removed, confirmation that enough lease term remains at the end of the mortgage (usually 70 years or more), evidence of adequate buildings insurance, and discharge of existing financial charges. Your solicitor cannot request release of the mortgage funds until every lender condition has been satisfied. If a condition cannot be met, the lender can withdraw the offer, so the report is a financing checkpoint as well as a legal one. For higher-value transactions, the lender will also require a formal valuation by a qualified surveyor, which your solicitor cross-checks against the title position.
What to Do If the Report Flags Problems
No report on title comes back entirely clean. Minor issues, such as a missing completion certificate from twenty years ago or a standard restrictive covenant that everyone in the street ignores, are routine and usually resolved with indemnity insurance or a quick enquiry to the seller’s solicitor.
When something more serious comes up, you have three practical options:
- Renegotiate. Ask the seller to reduce the price to reflect the cost of fixing the problem, or require them to resolve it before exchange. A short lease, for instance, might justify a price reduction equal to the estimated extension premium.
- Insure. For risks where enforcement is unlikely but the theoretical exposure is high, such as chancel repair liability or missing historic planning consent, indemnity insurance is the standard market solution.
- Withdraw. If the problem is fundamental — a title defect the seller cannot cure, an environmental risk that makes the property uninsurable, a lease so short no lender will touch it — walking away before exchange costs you solicitor and search fees but nothing more. After exchange, you are contractually committed.
Your solicitor will recommend a course of action, but the decision is yours. The point of the report is to put that decision in front of you with the full picture attached.
Signing Off and Moving to Exchange
Once you have read the report and discussed any concerns, you sign a confirmation that you have reviewed and accepted the findings. That signature tells your solicitor you are ready for exchange of contracts. It is a formal step, not a rubber stamp. Anything that still troubles you should be raised before you sign, because exchange typically follows within days, and after exchange, pulling out means forfeiting your deposit and potentially facing a claim for the seller’s losses. The report exists so that the moment of commitment is an informed one.