How to Find Out if there’s a Charge on Your Property

Worried there’s a debt secured against your home? You can answer that question yourself this afternoon, for £7, without asking anyone’s permission.

Go to GOV.UK’s Search for land and property information service, look the property up by postcode or address, read the free property summary, then download the title register. Any charge registered against the property is listed in Section C of that document, along with the name of whoever holds it.

A charge is a legal claim securing a debt against your property. It is not ownership. Your lender or creditor does not own your house, and an entry on your title does not mean anyone is about to take it away.

Before you go looking, one thing worth knowing. Plenty of sellers have no idea a charge is there, and the debt behind it can be anything from car finance to credit card debt.

In hundreds of purchases a year, a charge has never actually stopped us buying a property. It can delay a sale. It doesn’t kill one.

It’s worth checking even when nothing has gone wrong: before you go to market, before a remortgage, after a bereavement, during a divorce, or when you co-own with somebody who may have debts of their own.

How to check on GOV.UK, step by step

The route is short. The fees quoted in most older guides are wrong.

• Search the property. Open GOV.UK’s “Search for land and property information” service and enter the postcode or address.
• Read the free summary first. It confirms the registered owner, the tenure and the price paid, at no cost.
• Buy and download the title register (£7). This is the document that lists charges. The title plan is a separate £7 and shows boundaries only, so skip it unless you need it.
• Order a posted official copy (£11) only if you’re asked for one. Downloads aren’t official copies, and a lender or court sometimes insists on the certified version.

Source: GOV.UK and GOV.UK local land charges

HM Land Registry raised these fees on 9 December 2024, taking a digital copy from £3 to £7, the first change in over a decade (Propertymark). If a guide still says “from £3”, it’s out of date on everything else too.

And ignore the commercial “title check” websites. They resell the identical Land Registry document at a markup. Buy it at source.

Where the charges are: Section C

The register comes in three parts. Section A, the Property Register, describes the property and its tenure. Section B, the Proprietorship Register, names the owners and holds any restrictions. Section C, the Charges Register, is where charges live.

Each Section C entry gives the date of the charge and the name and address of whoever holds it, and in practice it also carries company details and a reference number.

What it never gives you is the amount outstanding.

That’s the most common misreading of a title register. The document proves a charge exists; only the chargeholder can tell you what it costs to clear. That number is the redemption or settlement figure. It runs to the day you complete rather than today, and it can include interest to completion, an early repayment charge and an admin fee.

So when somebody rings us in a panic having just found an entry, that’s what I tell them. Don’t worry. The entry gives you the chargeholder’s company details and a reference number, so either you contact them direct or your solicitor obtains the figure, and the charge gets removed by completion.

An empty Section C is not the all-clear

A debt belonging to one owner often doesn’t appear as a charge at all. It appears as a restriction in Section B.

A restriction controls what HM Land Registry will accept for registration, so it can stop a sale, a transfer or a new mortgage until a condition is met (HM Land Registry).

That matters most in joint ownership. A charge over the whole title needs every registered owner to have agreed to it, but a debt belonging to just one of you attaches to that person’s beneficial share, and a charging order protecting it is normally entered as a restriction in Section B rather than a charge in Section C. It’s a common discovery in a separation or divorce sale. Read both sections.

Which kind of charge have you found?

What happens next depends entirely on which one it is:

• A first mortgage or legal charge. Your lender. Redeemed at completion as routine.
• A second charge. A secured loan or consolidation loan sitting behind the mortgage.
• A charging order. A creditor with a county court judgment has secured the debt against your home. The debts behind the ones we see are ordinary, usually car finance or credit cards.
• An equitable charge. Often a family member who put money in and had it secured.
• A Help to Buy equity loan, registered as a second charge in favour of Homes England and repaid on sale.
• Right to Buy discount clawback. For completions on or after 18 January 2005, some or all of the discount is repayable if you sell within five years, tapering each year (Shelter). The government has announced plans to extend that window to ten years, so check the current rules with your council before you sell.
• A deferred payment agreement for care fees. Under the Care Act 2014 a council can take security over the person’s interest in the property, which matters if you’re selling a parent’s house to pay for care.
• Equity release or a lifetime mortgage. It registers like any other charge, but the interest rolls up, so the register understates the real liability by more than usual. Our guide to selling with equity release covers that.

Not every charge comes from a lender. We bought a divorce sale where the wife’s mother held a legal charge against the property.

She refused to let the sale proceed until she and the couple had agreed a figure for her share. An already difficult separation turned into a near-deadlock and the sale stalled.

It only moved when the daughter and son-in-law agreed a sum for her to remove the charge. Establish who has a legal or financial interest in your property before you go to market, not halfway through a sale.

The charges your title register will never show

Even a correctly read title register is incomplete, because local land charges sit on a separate register held by your council and never appear on the Land Registry title.

The search is free on GOV.UK and an official certificate is £15 where your council has moved onto the national register. That £15 buys the local land charges register entry, the LLC1, and nothing else. The full local authority search a buyer’s lender expects also includes the CON29 enquiries, which the council charges for separately and which usually run to well over the LLC1 fee.

Financially, the entries that bite are money the council is owed for works it carried out on the property, and grants that become repayable when you sell.

One caveat almost nobody mentions: HM Land Registry is still migrating councils onto the national digital service, so not every area’s data is there yet. Check whether your council has migrated, and if it hasn’t, go to the council direct, where the council runs the search itself and sets its own fee.

If the property isn’t registered at all

GOV.UK’s rule of thumb is that your property will be registered if you bought or mortgaged it since 1998. If it isn’t, there’s no title register to buy, and charges are searched against the owner’s name rather than the address, through HM Land Registry’s Land Charges Department on form K15.

Unregistered titles are rare now and we haven’t had one in years. The last was an inherited home that had never carried a mortgage, so it had never been registered.

The seller’s solicitor registered it as part of our purchase using an epitome of title, which is a summary of the deeds proving the ownership history. All the deeds were there and we expedited it, so the sale wasn’t delayed.

Can a charge be put on your property without you knowing?

Yes, and I’d rather give you the honest answer than a comforting one.

A charging order arrives in two stages. The interim order is usually made without a hearing, by a court officer. Where it’s made that way, the creditor must send you a copy within 21 days and you have 28 days to object in writing to both the court and the creditor (National Debtline).

The catch is that notice goes to the address the creditor holds for you. If the property is empty, inherited, let out, or you’re living overseas, the post lands in a letterbox nobody is reading. GOV.UK names those same groups among those most at risk of property fraud: landlords, owners abroad, and owners of empty, unmortgaged or unregistered homes.

The free fix is HM Land Registry’s Property Alert. It monitors up to 10 properties and emails you whenever somebody applies to change your register. It won’t block the change, but it tells you while you can still do something. You can also ask HM Land Registry to refuse to register a sale or mortgage unless a conveyancer certifies the application came from you (no fee if you don’t live there, £40 if you do).

And if what you’ve found is a final charging order, it does not by itself force you to sell. The creditor has to apply separately for an order for sale, and you can argue against it or ask for conditions (Citizens Advice).

What actually happens after you find one

Finding the entry is a lookup job, and you’ve now done it. Clearing it is conveyancing, and it runs like this:

• Identify the chargeholder from the entry on the office copies, using the company details and reference number.
• Request a redemption or settlement figure in writing.
• Settle it out of the proceeds at completion, in priority order. The first charge is paid first and anything behind it takes what’s left, which can be part or nothing.

On our purchases that’s handled by the panel solicitor we provide. They make contact with the chargeholder and ask for the redemption figure, and we cover your conveyancing fees when you use our recommended solicitor. If you’d rather instruct your own, use a good local firm.

Where a sale does slip, it’s almost never the charge itself. It’s that the seller had no information about it, so the solicitor has to email or call the lender to establish the details. Even that resolves very quickly.

What you shouldn’t do is start filling in discharge forms yourself. The paperwork differs depending on whether you’re clearing a repaid mortgage, a notice or a restriction, and it’s covered properly in our guide to removing a charge from a property.

Two habits are worth more than any of this. Check the register before you go to market rather than mid-transaction, and tell your buyer early. We’d far rather hear about a charge on day one than the week of exchange.

Common questions

How long does a charge stay on a property?

Until it’s repaid and removed. Charging orders don’t expire on their own, and the widespread belief that they lapse after six years is wrong. Two separate time limits get muddled here. Under the Limitation Act 1980 a creditor generally has twelve years to bring an action to recover the principal secured by a mortgage or charge. Separately, a creditor can’t start a fresh court action on a judgment debt after six years, but in Lowsley v Forbes the House of Lords held that limit applies to bringing that new action, not to enforcing a judgment already obtained, though the court’s permission may be needed to enforce after six years (Blake Morgan).

Can I remortgage with a charge on the property?

Usually yes with an ordinary second charge, though your first lender may need to consent or sign a deed of postponement. With a charging order it’s much harder, and most mainstream lenders will want it cleared as part of the remortgage.

What if the sale proceeds don’t clear every charge?

The shortfall stays a debt you owe; it just stops being secured against that property. Get free regulated advice from StepChange, National Debtline or Citizens Advice before agreeing anything with a creditor.

I paid my mortgage off years ago, so why is it still showing?

Because repaying a mortgage doesn’t automatically clean the register. Lenders normally file an electronic discharge with HM Land Registry, but it doesn’t always happen promptly. Find your lender’s redemption confirmation, ask them to submit the DS1, and check the title again afterwards.

This guide is general information about checking a property title in England and Wales. It isn’t legal or debt advice. For your own position, speak to a solicitor or get free regulated help from Citizens Advice, National Debtline or StepChange. Property Rescue is regulated by the FCA for Sale and Rent Back only (FCA Register 522471).