Chapter 4 Key facts checklists

Unregistered land

Unregistered land is land where title has not been registered at the Land Registry. Proof of ownership therefore comes from an examination of title deeds relating to that land.
Identification of any third party proprietary interests burdening a piece of unregistered land cannot be discovered by a search of the land register. Rather, an examination of the title documents and various registers, the most important of which is the Land Charges Register, is required to discover their existence.
A search of the Land Charges Register is made against the names of previous owners of the land, not the property address. A purchaser is bound by all land charges he did not discover, either by failing to search against all relevant names, or searching against incorrect names.
Legal interests over unregistered land bind the world, with the exception of the puisne mortgage, which requires registration as a land charge to be binding.
Interests covered by the Land Charges Act 1972 (LCA 1972) must be registered as the appropriate land charge to bind a purchaser.
Failure to register such an interest appropriately means that the interest will not bind certain types of purchasers of the land.
A purchaser can take free of a beneficial interest under a trust in unregistered land where he successfully overreaches that interest.
Where a purchaser has failed to overreach a beneficial interest under a trust, enforcement of that interest against him depends upon the doctrine of notice.
Enforcement of pre-1926 restrictive covenants and equitable easements, and interests arising by estoppel, is also governed by the doctrine of notice.