When you buy a house with a tenant already in it, you buy the building and inherit a set of rights you didn't write. The tenancy decides when you can have vacant possession, and the price you should pay reflects that.
Land has had a version of that problem for a long time. The register shows who owns registered land. Options, conditional contracts, rights of pre-emption and rights to direct a sale, the things that control what happens next, generally haven't been recorded in a way you can search across the whole register.
That starts to change on 6 April 2027. HM Land Registry's Practice Guide 84 sets out regulations made on 8 June 2026. The person who holds the right has to report it, through a regulated conveyancer, within 60 days of the grant. Rights granted between 8 June 2026 and 5 April 2027 have until 6 October 2027. The public dataset follows in April 2028. Exemptions include rights lasting under 18 months, security for loans and certain section 106 infrastructure rights.
The guide describes the aim as improving transparency over who has a stake in land development.
None of it is usable today. For lenders, conveyancers and anyone building on property data, it's two dates for the diary: April 2027 for reporting and April 2028 for the dataset.
Propalt's ownership data primarily covers residential property in England and Wales and draws on the registers that exist now. Control rights will be another layer to watch when they arrive.
Which part of your due diligence would change first if you could see who holds an option?
Related: Land assembly: ownership and planning data
Co-founder of Propalt and a property investor and developer for 20 years
