Vacant Land and Derelict Land in the UK

Dec. 3, 2009 - PRLog -- The first thing to do when trying to find the owner of an unused piece of land is to contact the land registry, you can do this directly or you can use a company to this for you, the advantage of using a company is that they usually access the correct information in a shorter amount of time, they will also be able to conduct a search of the index map should it be required, this is a further search to ascertain the current owner of the land. Unused land searches are very popular in the UK due to the amount of unused and vacant land.

If the vacant land is registered you will immediately know the owner of the unused land as it will be contained within the Title Register of the piece of land, further more you can order a Title Plan and see an outline plan of the land, as sometimes large piece of unused land can be divided and have different owners even though to look at the land you would assume that it is one piece of registered land.

If you contact the land registry and the land is not registered there are many things you can do to contact the current owner.

Unregistered land also known as disused land, vacant land or derelict land is land that is not registered with the land registry, this does not mean that it is ownerless land it simply means that Land Registry do not hold details of the properties as they have not changed hands since 1985. To make a clear point, all land is owned by someone as are all buildings, the people who own them may not even realise that they own them but they do.

If the land or buildings are unregistered you most locate the owner by either conducting your own investigations or contacting a company who can do this for you.  Finding the owner of a piece of land is a hard task to carry out on your own but once you have found that the land is not registered you should immediately start speaking to people in the local community. Someone in the local community will know the owner or previous owner of the unregistered land and then at least you will have a starting point, the problem then comes that you have to locate the address of the people involved, this is why it is easier and cost effective to use a professional service to locate the owners on your behalf.  These companies will have access to the latest systems used in the location of people and will be able to use them to contact the relevant people involved. Investigating the owners of unregistered land is interesting but it can also be time consuming.

There are many people who want to claim unregistered land but the easiest thing to do is to contact the owner and ask them anything directly. Claiming unregistered land is hard and it can be expensive, for example you could fence of f a large field at cost to yourself and then the owner could come along and prove ownership. If you are going to try and claim unregistered land via vacant possession do not try and make contact with the owner as by doing so you are proving that you are not the owner.

Good luck with your vacant land searches.

http://www.findermonkey.co.uk/unregistered-land-buildings

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FinderMonkey.co.uk are specialists in land registry documents, unregistered land searches and finding the owners of unregistered land and buildings.

Find Out More information about unregistered land searches at the FinderMonkey website:
http://www.findermonkey.co.uk/unregistered-land-buildings