Title deeds v search results

[FreshStart2025]

We’re selling our house. It was extended in the 1990s by a previous owner.

The title deed and the results from the search results show a slightly different boundary, due to a side extension.

Our buyer is insisting we update the title deed now, very close to completion, which looks timely and costly.

Which is right? The extension had full planning permission and it has never been raised before in two sales.

Presumably you have yet to exchange. It’s a matter for you whether you comply with their request or put the house back on the market.

As a buyer, I would not buy a property that had a question mark over the boundary.

As a seller, I'd do the leg work to fix the problem (that your solicitor should have noticed when you bought!).

Most conveyancing solicitors send the title plan to the buyer and ask them to confirm the boundary is broadly in line with the plan. Also the surveyor is meant to point these things out.

The title plan is a general boundary only. It is there so that you can identify which property it is, not the specifics of where the boundary may lie (unless the deeds specify to the contrary). What is on the ground is much more a reliable guide than the title plan, which is usually based off old OS maps.

It was never raised as an issue by our solicitor and he was quite thorough! Also never raised when the previous owners sold the property. We had a full survey and never mentioned then either.

The fact that the Title Plan is a “general boundary” is what I’m confused about. We’re talking about a strip of building about 60cm wide so if only a general boundary, how are we to know if it is or isn’t on the boundary line?

I phoned Land Registry and they said they normally allow a 1m give or take either way so that doesn’t help!

As Collaborate said:

"What is on the ground is much more a reliable guide than the title plan, which is usually based off old OS maps."

Especially if, as you say, this has been in place since the 1990s.
.

"We’re talking about a strip of building about 60cm wide so if only a general boundary, how are we to know if it is or isn’t on the boundary line?"

At first I thought maybe you were talking about a couple of metres. But the point you raise is central to the whole thing about Land Registry plans. these plans just show the general outlines of the property.

Land registry plans are typically at 1:1250. What this means is that one metre on the plan represents 1,250 metres on the ground.

Or, more pertinently to your situation, one centimetre on the plan represents 12.5 metres on the ground.

So if you are talking about 60cm on the ground then that is shown by just less than 0.05 cm (half of a millimetre) on the plan - and if you (or your buyer) want to try and measure that, then good luck to you.

"I phoned Land Registry and they said they normally allow a 1m give or take either way"

On a typical plan, 1m is represented by just less than 1mm on the plan.

Your buyers appear to be demanding that you get the boundary of the property altered on the plan by less than one half of a millimetre.

Just putting things into context here.

Sounds bonkers when you look at it like that but that’s what they’re insisting before completion.