The structure of the registered title — property, proprietorship and charges registers — and how official copies are read to reveal what binds a buyer and what does not.
The register tells a buyer most of what affects the land, but not everything, and the gaps are where transactions go wrong. This chapter starts with the three registers that make up a title at HM Land Registry, what official copies show, and the limits of the title plan, before separating the seller's job of deducing title from the buyer's job of investigating it. It then works through the matters that demand closer scrutiny: overriding interests that bind without appearing on the register, easements and the divide between restrictive and positive covenants, co-ownership and overreaching, and the protection of third-party interests through notices and restrictions. It closes with the classes of freehold and leasehold title, the discharge of existing mortgages, the priority given by an official search, and the extra checks required where the seller is a company.
