Is there an easy way to find out who owns the freehold on a flat?

[Needmoresleep]

I am trying to sell a flat so chased the freeholder for an invoice for the ground rent. Except he sold it on 6 months ago. And does not know who he sold it to. He might have an email for the purchasers lawyer, and said he would try to dig it out, but I am not holding out much hope.

Any ideas of how I can find out who owns it now? Normally I would be quite pleased not to be asked to pay, bu I don't want this to hold up an otherwise straightforward sale.

Is it something that would have to be registered with the Land Registry? Even so I would obviously prefer not to have to pay for the information.

If the freehold is available to download from the gov.uk Land Registry website, it will cost you £3. If you have to apply for a copy by post it will cost £7.

Perfect. It seems to be a new service.

A snoopers charter....so how much is my siblings/neighbours/boss' mortgage...

Fingers Xed you get the info from the Land Reg.

We had a lot of problems with a supposedly absentee freeholder when buying a flat a few yrs ago. Had to employ a tracing service in the end, but they did run him to earth quite quickly. He was living just a few miles away - under another name! - presumably in order to avoid debt collectors - there were debts attached to the FH.

We bought the FH in the end, and the details on the Land Reg do show the FHolder.

Thanks, found it, albeit an industrial estate in North London. I am doing my best to ensure conveyancing costs remain low, and things move fast, so don't want to be in arrears on ground rent.

My mother owns a flat where the freeholder has never been known. I think the original developer lost it in one of its many subsidiaries. Nothing seems to registered with the Land Registry. The managing agent has everyone pay the ground rent all the same and it is being held in reserve in case anyone ever turns up to claim. That seems sufficient to allow people to buy and sell flats in the block. I think they should be more robust and try to buy the freehold. Perhaps if no one can be found we could get it for nothing?

What happens if the FHolder can't be found and you want to buy the FH, is that it goes to a legal tribunal, where the price is decided by a formula taking into account length of lease, ground rent, current value of property.

We had to go down the absentee freeholder route when we wanted to buy the FH, since although our private eyes had found him, no letters were answered, and when we called at the address the person who answered denied all knowledge - though our FHolder had bought the property not long before!

Once the process was under way, though, up he popped, evidently thinking there was going to be money in it (a lot of the price eventually went via the court to pay his debts).

I am really glad we bought the FH - the absentee business had caused a lot of problems with the purchase. We were supposed to be going halves with a dd, but her mortgage was refused at the last minute, purely because of the (supposedly) absentee FHolder.

Meant to add, in the case of a truly absentee FHolder, the money will be held by the court in case he or she does eventually turn up.

It's not a new service - must be 10 years or more that digital downloads have been available online. The govt has a massive digital programme across all departments and has done for years. All the registered information is in the public domain.